Better Off Just Being Dead
by charizzaard
Summary: "Incredible how I could face a house full of vampires who undoubtedly want to gouge my eyes out, how I could stand in front of anyone who wants me dead and yet stay entirely calm and confident in everything that I am. But when it comes to her… That little Bennett witch. She scares the living crap out of me."
1. Chapter 1

So, today is the day I've decided to finally face Bonnie Bennett. Here I am, standing at the all too familiar front porch of the Salvatore mansion, wearing what all the cool kids nowadays seem to be wearing, trying to fit in, trying to be normal. Yet I know I never will be, not after everything I've done. And honestly? It doesn't bother me as much as it should. Not me personally, at least. I don't care that I'll never be normal, but I know that she does. I know that Bonnie hates me, and that is the worst of all the feelings I've been introduced to.

I forced myself to take a deep breath after realizing I'd been holding it in for way too long, lifting my hand up as I did so and preparing myself mentally for knocking on the door, half expecting her to open it with a knife in her hand which she would then instantly plunge inside my skull. Before my knuckles could land on the door, it opened forcefully and I saw the unexpected dark brows of my favorite vampire, and his unmistakeable expression of constant annoyance.

"I could literally hear your heart beating its way out of your chest from the kitchen. What the hell are you doing here, Kai?" Damon asked me and let out a heavy sigh. I could see in his eyes he was already aware of the reason I was there.

"Is she here?" I asked him quietly. He stared back at me for a couple of seconds before slowly stepping back and widening the door open slowly as he nudged his head towards the stairs. "She's upstairs in my room."

I nodded at his answer ignoring the pinch of jealousy in my chest and not wasting a second to move past him, though he stopped me before I could enter the house entirely.

"What?"

"Listen, Kai… I don't know how well she's gonna take seeing you. I told her about the stupid merge and that you helped get her back but… she's definitely one to hold a grudge. I know from personal experience," he said with an ironic smile playing on his lips for a second before it quickly faded away and he was back to his everlasting brooding look, then he finally stepped back and let me through. I nodded, catching myself gulping for a second before I rushed up the stairs and headed towards Damon's room.

I followed the magical trail that led me in the right direction, towards her. As I neared the door, I honestly thought I would have a panic attack. God, these feelings could be so annoying sometimes, how do people actually function on a daily basis with these? Well, I suppose that's probably the reason for the millions of love songs written to date.

My sweaty palms reached for the knob on the door, carefully twisting it and pushing the door open. Then I saw her. She hadn't noticed me yet, but in that moment I admired her stillness as she rested her head against the silk pillow. Rarely did I ever get a chance to see her without fear or hatred in her eyes, so I took the opportunity to watch her for as long as I could, to study the soft curves of her face and allow myself to smile at the thought that I'd helped save her life. Of course, I endangered it in the first place but… Hey, past is in the past for a reason.

As I took a step forward, one of the floorboards beneath my feet squeaked quietly and her eyes jolted open in response. I froze in place, suddenly left with a lot of words in my mind that didn't seem to be able to find their way towards my mouth.

She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion and a gush of fear blew up in her eyes as she sat up. I noticed that she was wounded and still weak from her many fights to get back home. She began to tremble and pulled up the sheet to cover herself up. "Leave."

Never did I think that one single word could hurt me so much.

She was sitting up in the bed, gripping tightly onto the sheets and almost piercing through my eyes with her own and at that point, any confidence and any idea of what I could say to her was lost. I stood still in the same place – well, okay, if still means that my hands were trembling like crazy and I lost the function to breathe with my mouth agape – then yes, I was very still.

I wished I could say something. Anything. I wanted to apologize, to tell her how guilty I felt for leaving her there, and how happy I was that she was alive and safe again. To tell her that I think she's beautiful… Frightening, but – beautiful. Yet, I stood there in front of her, the only sounds escaping my mouth were the shallow scared breaths under my own chin.

Incredible how I could face a house full of vampires who undoubtedly want to gouge my eyes out, how I could stand in front of anyone who wants me dead and yet stay entirely calm and confident in everything that I am. But when it comes to her… That little Bennett witch. She scares the living crap out of me.

So I did what any sane man in my position would do. I turned around and did exactly what she asked of me.

I left.

Damon was still downstairs in the living room drinking, and I walked towards him, about to excuse myself and leave when he made eye contact with me, as if to enquire me about what happened.

"She's, uh, asleep. Didn't want to wake her." I lied through my teeth as I watched him reach for another glass on the table and pour bourbon into it. He handed it to me without any explanation and I stared at the golden liquid for a few seconds before taking it and quickly downing all of it. My throat burned in response, but the pain didn't come even close to the anxiety that was piling up inside of me after seeing Bonnie again. Suddenly, my head felt like it was going to explode and I started to choke up for whatever unknown reason.

"Thanks," I nodded silently at Damon, then stormed out of the house because of the unstoppable pounding in my head. I honestly felt as if my head was going to burst open, and as soon as I closed the door behind myself I felt wetness around my cheeks, followed by a relief in my head. The more of this strange liquid left my eyes, the greater the relief was. So I let it all go. I walked over to the nearest park, sat on a bench and cried for hours. I'm not sure if it was all because of that one word, or maybe that word was just the trigger – but it felt as though I as crying because of everything I'd ever done to her. For every single time I grabbed her hand just a little bit too tight, for every time I caused fear in those gorgeous green eyes, for every single time I hurt her. And most of all – for knowing that I could never take it all back, that she would never forgive me because... I was just another monster to her.

For the next few days I continued to watch her from afar. I couldn't bring myself to get close to her after the way she'd reacted to me, so I'd just watch her when she left the house to go to the coffee place with Elena, or follow her when she went shopping with Caroline.

I know what you might think, stalking her again, Kai? Really? Well, on the contrary, I wasn't actually stalking her, because she knew I was there. I would make myself visible to her every time I 'accidentally' found myself in the same place as her. And whenever she'd notice me, sitting a couple of tables away from where she was, I'd give her a weak smile. At first, Bonnie would either glare at me or completely ignore me, although her eyes somehow kept finding their way towards my direction.

And then after a few weeks, when she saw me wandering around the Mystic Grill alone, and when I sent her one of my sincerest smiles, I could swear that for a split second, I noticed her smiling back. Almost as if she might have been glad that I was there again. That she wouldn't be disappointed with my absence. And that was enough encouragement I'd needed to actually talk to her again.

So I walked over to the table she was sitting at, never taking my eyes off of her even though she was so obviously trying to ignore me, looking down to the book she was holding in her hands so desperately. I stood next to her table, waiting for her to look up at me and when she kept her eyes glued intensely to the book, I sat down in the chair next to her. She was still looking into the book, furrowing her eyebrows as if she was deep in thought. I couldn't help but smile because of how blatantly she was failing to ignore me.

"Interesting book?" I asked. Upon hearing my voice, she closed her eyes slowly, then placed the book down and finally looked at me with a forced smile on her lips.

"Why are you following me?"

"I'm not following you, I'm just keeping my distance. I thought that was what you wanted."

"Then… Why did you come sit here?"

"Because I… I want to talk to you." I looked into her eyes, feeling my hands begin to tremble instantly. I knew what I wanted t tell her but I was scared I'd not be able to spit it out again.

"Talk to me about what exactly?"

"I just… I wanted to apologize. For everything I've put you through. Mostly for… You know, stabbing you and leaving you for dead," I breathed out shakily, trying to still my composure as I spoke, "I don't expect you to forgive me right now but.. Maybe eventually. I have a lot of making up to do, Bonnie, and... I need you to give me one more chance."

"I don't trust you, Kai." Her words felt like a stab wound to my heart.

"...but I do trust Damon. And he told me you helped save my life," she continued, and I found myself unable to process what she was saying. "He told me you almost died saving me. Why would you do that, Kai?"

"I wanted to. I felt so guilty about leaving you there and being the reason you came close to taking your own life, so I needed to help you. I just couldn't let you get hurt. I don't ever want to see you get hurt again, Bonnie."

Bonnie looked at me for a few seconds, biting her lip and obviously finding it difficult to believe me. And I honestly I didn't blame her when she got up to leave. I wouldn't believe me either.

"I have to go, I have somewhere to be," she said, before turning around to leave the Grill as fast as she could.

As badly as I wanted to run after her, I completely froze in my seat. All I could do is sit there and watch her leave. And of course, feel super bad for myself.

Anyway, after that encounter I hadn't actually managed to find her for a good week or so. She wasn't at the Grill, and I never saw her around the park either. Yeah, I know, I probably should have found something else to do out in the real world than chase after the smallest opportunity to catch a glimpse of Bonnie Bennett. But I literally couldn't even think about anything else. _What the fuck's up with that?_

After a disappointing day out, I went back to my shabby motel room that I'd managed to sneak into, only to find that it was rented out to someone else. When the motel manager approached me after 10 minutes into my discussion with the current guests, I almost flipped and murdered all of them at once. Of course as soon as I was about to mutter a spell under my breath, Bonnie's hurt face flashed before my eyes. _Shit. Fucking Bonnie._ Killing "innocent" people is only going to make my situation with her more difficult.

I sighed and left as quickly as I could, trying not to let my killer instincts get the best of me. At that point, I had no place to crash, no money and no food. So I went to the only place in town I knew that somehow always had spare bedrooms. Yeah, you guessed it. The Salvatore mansion.

The plan was simple really – if there were no lights on, I'd just walk in the front door and find the nearest bedroom to sleep in. Damon wasn't particularly cautious of a vampire when asleep, and Stefan was out of town anyway.

So I did exactly that. The door was unlocked as always and I had no trouble getting in. However, once inside the house, I noticed an orange light and faint laughter coming in from the living room. I couldn't contain my curiosity so I walked into the room.

The fire was on in the living room and Damon was sitting on the couch, with a glass of bourbon in his hand. His other arm, much to my unwanted surprise, was flipped over the shoulders of the girl I'd been dying to see for days. Bonnie was laughing along with him, leaned on his shoulder, with a newspaper in one hand and a pencil in her other.

Immediately, I felt myself getting worse. My heart must have been beating like crazy, and my throat was dry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw them. Together like that. Close. _His arm around her._

"Kai? What are you doing here?"

Damon's words snapped me back to reality. Then Bonnie finally noticed me as well.

"Uh.. I -uh.." I gulped. "I didn't have a place to crash. Was hoping you'd have a spare bedroom." I paused again, leaning slightly against the door frame because I was seriously starting to lose my composure. "Sorry, Bon. I didn't know you were still here."

Bonnie barely acknowledged that I said anything to her but she looked right at me, her eyebrows furrowing as if she was studying me. Probably not the best timing to be a blubbering weak idiot.

Damon took his arm off her shoulder and got up, setting his drink down on the coffee table. He began to walk towards me.

"Just because I am entirely wasted right now and since there's no one here besides Bon-Bon and myself, I might be able to find a room for you."

I nodded and followed Damon out of the living room to a room just around the corner from the main stairs.

"Hope this is cosy enough for you," Damon grinned.

"Yeah. Thanks. Uh- where.. where are you and Bonnie gonna sleep?"

"Don't worry, we're crashing in my room. By the way.. I'll probably kick your ass in the morning."

Damon smirked as he was leaving the bedroom and I could feel my stomach twisting around. Not because of his empty threat, but because of what he'd said before that. Bonnie and him… sleeping in the same room, in the same bed. _God, why's this bothering me so much?_

Let's just say getting to sleep was no easy task. I kept twisting and turning, trying to get myself to think about anything else but Damon and Bonnie in the same bed together. His arm around her. His hands on her…

Her faint chuckles I heard from upstairs weren't helping.

All I could think of was how much I wanted to be in Damon's place. To be the one making her laugh, the one she'd actually let near. But all I could do was lay in bed, listening to the fun they were having and picturing everything that could possibly be going on.

A few hours later – hours of pure torture, may I add – everything was finally quiet. I assumed they'd both fallen asleep. However, that outcome was damn near impossible for me considering how absolutely awake I was. I guess I didn't have to have a bedroom to lay in and stare at the ceiling the whole night. I could have done this outside in a park or something. I would probably feel better anyway. Had I not come, that is…

After what seemed like an eternity of laying alone in the darkness, I heard footsteps coming down the staircase. Light ones. That had to be Bonnie.

When I heard them shuffling around and suddenly coming closer to the room that I was staying in, I was practically experiencing cardiac arrest. And before I had time to do anything, or to even wipe my wet cheeks, the door opened slowly.

Bonnie stood there, carefully peeking in. Even in the darkness I could tell she was wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top. That was definitely a way I'd never seen her before.

"Kai? Are you awake?" she whispered.

"Yeah. Yeah, come in," I mumbled and sat up in the bed, trying to wipe my face and make myself look as if I _hadn't_ been bathing in a pool of stress for the past few hours. She came in and cautiously sat at the edge on my bed, still at a safe distance from me.

"What are you doing here?" I asked bluntly.

"I don't know. I just got an uneasy vibe from you. Couldn't sleep cuz of it."

"Ah. That." I gulped.

"Yeah. Did something happen?"

"What can I say? I'm just super worried about disturbing you and Damon's fun times," I answered sarcastically. I could feel myself slipping uncontrollably and I was actually terrified by the idea of accidentally letting her see my weakness. Guess all she'd really have to do is look in the mirror.

"Our… fun times? What are you talking about?"

"I didn't think your 'frenemies' relationship would lead anywhere but I guess I was wrong."

"Um.. Kai. Damon and I are not… _together_ , if that's what you're suggesting. He's my best friend. He's crazy in love with Elena. I just.. have literally no other place to go."

As soon as those words left her mouth I felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted off my heart. I finally realized this was an actual opportunity to talk to Bonnie, alone. Face to face. Possibly without her storming off this time.

"Sorry. I shouldn't have assumed anything. In fact, I shouldn't have done a lot of things." I sat up a bit, leaning closer towards her.

"Kai..."

"Let.. Just let me say this, please." I looked at her for a second, my eyes were probably desperate at that point. I just needed her to know how sorry I was. I wanted her to know I changed. Finally, she nodded.

"I am so sorry, Bonnie. For everything."

We shared what was possibly the longest eye contact I'd ever had in my life. Her eyes were uncertain for a while, but the more time passed the more her eyes softened at my gaze.

"I'll never lie to you again, Bonnie. And if I hurt you, it will be the last thing I'll ever do. I promise."

I swallowed as I watched her for a few moments. She did not take her eyes off mine for a moment. Maybe she was studying my face to see if I was telling the truth.

Whatever came over me in that moment I'll never know, but I suddenly reached for her hand to take in my own. She flinched at first, which wasn't exactly the pleasant reaction I was hoping for, but she didn't take her hand away. That was enough for me. So I held onto it, gently stroking her soft wrist with my thumb.

"I don't think you ever touched me without siphoning my magic."

I gulped, feeling a bit guilty for her words.

"That's gonna change."

I said confidently and looked up at her. She was absolutely stunning in the moonlit room, sitting at the edge of my bed with nothing but a layer of thin fabrics covering her figure. I wanted so badly to kiss her, to just stay in this moment. I knew that it was definitely too soon but I kept inching closer to her, until she rested her forehead against mine. I could smell the alcohol on her breath, and it made my decision a bit easier. I didn't want to do anything like this while she was still drunk. I needed to do it right.

I swallowed hard at the tension growing between us, my breath was getting heavy and I could feel her skin burning up at the spaces where I touched her. I almost thought I'd begun siphoning her without noticing but that wasn't the case. So I moved my hand from hers and placed it on the side of her face, feeling that same heat rise up in her cheek. Her sweet breath seemed to get heavier by the moment.

"Bon… Please tell me you feel this."

I pleaded her to say she felt the same way when she was with me as I did with her. I wouldn't be able to believe that she didn't feel this. This heavy tension between us that was already ripping me apart. I was falling in love.

Instead of answering, Bonnie took in yet another heavy breath and inched even closer to me, her nose poking gently into my cheek and her lips brushing against mine. Her hand squeezed my own gently as she lowered it down from her face. When she moved away I thought I saw her nod for a second, but she paused to catch her breath.

I had been so close to her. Her lips right in front of mine. Right there. Holding myself back from continuing – whatever it was that just happened – was probably one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do.

And when she finally left my room, getting to sleep was even harder than before.

* * *

 **A/N: HELLO! Yes, hi, I am alive. So I dug up the beginning of this story on my computer last night when I was getting Bonkai feels, and I decided to continue it. So I wrote like 5 pages last night and I'm super happy with this. I only really did it to satisfy my Bonkai fantasies, I had so many feels I couldn't contain. This would obviously just be like a first chapter to a story that I want to continue. Let me know if you liked it or if you have any suggestions or ideas for this story!**

 **Thanks! :)**

 **Char xx**


	2. Chapter 2

I'd woken up the following day to a familiar smell of bacon coming in from the kitchen. As I sat at the edge of my bed, all the events of last night rushed through my head and I couldn't help but doubt that what happened with Bonnie was real. Maybe I'd just dreamed it. I mean, I was pretty much shaking and sweating in what seemed to be a long sleepless night of stress so… It would be possible that I imagined it. Would Bonnie ever really get that close to me? Even under the influence of alcohol?

I knew these thoughts would keep bothering me if I didn't ask her about it. But then again, even if it did happen, would she remember? Would she admit she remembers? Probably not.

I walked over into the kitchen and saw Damon making breakfast. At least he'd moved on from the pancakes. To be honest, I can't fault his cooking, for as much of it as I have experienced at least. Bonnie wasn't in the room.

"Mooorning, sunshine."

Damon turned around to smile at me as he took out three plates from the cupboard. I guess I was invited to stay for breakfast. A thought quickly arose in my mind and I knew I'd have to talk to Damon about it before Bonnie appeared, otherwise I'd probably choke up again.

"Morning!" I started, maybe slightly too enthusiastically. "So um, Damon. You're a reasonable man."

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"I recently got… let's say 'evicted' from a place that I was crashing at and well… As you may already know, my entire family despises me. So, it's safe to say I have nowhere to go. And as I'm trying to be a better person now, and you know… not hurt anyone to get what I want… I wondered if I could stay here for a while. At least until I figure out what to do."

"Bonnie's staying here," he said.

"Oh."

"I don't know how she would feel about you sleeping in the same house as her."

"Well, it could be like old times again. The three of us. Except this time, I'm not going to terrorize you. I promise."

Damon kept his eyes on me while setting the hot food out on the plates.

"It's not me you have to convince, champ."

And that's what I was afraid of.

"Look, I gotta run into town a do a few errands for a few friends today so you can have the day to ask her yourself. Best I can do right now."

I nodded. "Yeah. Thank you."

A few seconds later, a pair of familiar footsteps came trotting down the steps in the hallway. Bonnie walked into the room, her hair still messy and face still showing signs of pleasant dreams. She looked up towards us and seemed to stutter a bit when she saw me. Kinda like she forgot I came by last night. Judging by those few slightly-too-long moments of eye contact we shared, I knew last night had been real. After the pause, she smiled politely to both of us and walked over to the table rubbing her eyes together. I kept my gaze on her the whole time and then she looked back at me again. Her face seemed slightly awkward and that's when I realized that maybe I shouldn't keep staring at people for so long. Maybe it wasn't a socially acceptable thing. I don't know, my dad never taught me anyway. Still, I kept staring. I couldn't just look away.

Eventually her eyes stopped roaming awkwardly around the room to avoid my gaze and they finally settled on mine again. She blinked a few times. I didn't notice the smile that I must have flashed her until I saw her laugh quickly and shake her head. She looked away again.

"Okay, take these."

Damon turned around to me with two plates of fresh bacon and scrambled eggs with toast on the side, so I grabbed them without question and took the opportunity to carry them over to Bonnie. I placed one of the plates in front of her and took the seat right opposite of her. I didn't want to get too close by sitting next to her, and I also kind of wanted a seat with a direct view of her. Maybe I could make her hold eye contact with me again.

* * *

Breakfast was suitably awkward and Bonnie avoided my gaze the whole time. Honestly, it made my hope of convincing her to stick around all the worse. But at that point I didn't even realize how much more awkward it was about to get.

"Okay, kiddos. Play nice. I gotta head into town, but if I hear of any Tom & Jerry mishaps going on here…" He made a threatening eye gesture and walked over to Bonnie, leaning lightly on her chair.

"You gonna be okay here?" he asked her quietly, and when she nodded he whispered: "Be a good girl," then kissed her head and walked off to the front door.

My jealousy of how easy it was for Damon to get close to her kept growing constantly. For a second, I almost thought I didn't want to stay here if I'd have to feel like this. But after a few moments, the tension loosened up a bit when Bonnie started a conversation and I remembered what it was that I wanted to be here for.

"So how come you stayed over here last night?"

She questioned me while getting up the clean the dishes. I instantly decided to help her. Of course, I needed to leave the best possible impression on her.

"Um... Well, I snuck into a spare room in a motel nearby but someone rented it yesterday, so yeah… Had to leave."

I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye as she started the water in the sink.

"You wash, I dry?" I probed carefully.

"Sure."

I took a dry cloth sitting next to the sink and waited for her to hand me the first plate.

"I didn't know that you were staying here. I mean I-… Thought you might be, but I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"What happened with your family? Did you get your revenge?"

"No."

She looked up at me with interest in her eyes and handed me the first plate. I took it carefully from her.

"I wanted to. On my dad mostly. But… Then the merge with Luke happened, and I felt different. And they were all clearly mad at me for doing what I did. To Luke. And I'm sure they all want to kill me, but I'm the coven leader now so they can't. Well, Liv tried to. I'm sure you've heard that story."

Bonnie sniggered quietly, keeping her focus on the dishes.

"Yeah. I guess I owe you a thanks for that. For helping Jeremy and…. For helping me."

I took the next plate from her and caught her eyes, pausing for a moment.

"You don't owe me anything, Bon."

She took in a loud breath while keeping her eyes locked with mine. Then she quickly focused her sight on the dishes in front of her again.

"What about Jo?"

"She hates me. And she has a right to. In fact, probably everyone I've ever interacted with has a right to hate me. I'm sure you'll agree on that note."

Bonnie looked back at me for a moment and gave a light-hearted snigger. I laughed in return.

"Hey, do you wanna play Monopoly? With someone who doesn't cheat?"

Bonnie smiled for a moment as she handed me the last plate and turned the water off. She took a moment to think as she dried her hands on her jeans.

"Sure, why not. I don't have any plans today."

"Good."

* * *

"Don't you dare."

I threatened as I saw Bonnie pulling out money to buy the last possible house on the most expensive lot on the board that she had managed to buy in the very first round. I landed on it almost every time after that and by this point I was pretty much bankrupt.

"Noooo, Bonnie."

"Yes."

"No! Come on! This is so unfair." I said as I tried to supress my laughter. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had this much fun. We'd sat down with the board on the carpet just in front of the fireplace and I suddenly wanted this every day. A few hours, playing dumb board games with Bonnie Bennett in a cosy living room.

"Hey, you wanted to play this! Now deal with it!" she spat back in an all too serious but playful tone.

"Okay, okay."

I managed to calm my laughter and rolled the dice one more time. And lo and behold, I landed right onto the lot she had just upgraded. My head dropped down on to floor as I heard her laughter and celebratory shouting.

"Mister Parker, I believe you've gone into a debt. Therefore, I win! And you owe me."

I raised my head up and I couldn't stop smiling when I saw her happy face. For the first time she was laughing, and it was because of me. I could get used to that feeling.

"And how will I repay your dept, Miss Bennett?"

"I'll think of something. Just you wait."

"I'm sure you will."

We laughed briefly for a moment before she began to pick up the game pieces and put the board away. I stayed in my position, resting on the carpet, and I watched her. She gave me a few slight glances when she noticed me staring.

"Why do you do that?" she asked.

"Do what?"

"Uh—stare, I guess. You kinda don't even look away when I catch you staring."

"I don't know, I just… I don't see why I should look away? What else am I supposed to look at anyway, you're the only person here."

"I guess."

"Is it really that bad? I mean, I wouldn't know- I don't really know how the social construct works these days. I can stop if you want. Maybe."

She laughed quietly, putting the last pieces into the box and folding the board over.

"No, you don't need to stop. I find it interesting, actually. Kind of – refreshing? People these days, they don't do that. No one really looks into another person's eyes, we just kind of avoid it at all possible costs."

"Maybe it's cuz you're scared."

"Scared?"

"Yeah… I think you can tell a lot by just looking at someone. And I mean, _really_ looking. That's why it might be scary to people. Cuz maybe they don't want to see these things."

She nodded, thinking for a few seconds then smiled at me purposely keeping her eyes on mine. After what I'd said I kinda really hoped that she wouldn't be able to tell how smitten over her I was by just looking at me. But then again, I didn't really care in that moment. I just liked being there with her.

"Listen, Bonnie, I was meaning to ask you something. I know it's probably a long shot, but I was talking to Damon this morning and I don't really have a place I can stay right now…"

Bonnie broke our gaze and looked away awkwardly and I wondered if I should have picked a better moment to ask her this.

"I just wanted to know if maybe it would be okay with you if I… stayed here… just for a little while?"

"No."

"Oh."

Bonnie looked towards the fireplace and suddenly my chest felt extremely heavy.

"I'll admit I had fun today with you, Kai," she started, and my heart warmed a bit at her words. "And I can see that you are different, and that you're trying to do better but, I can't be a part of that right now. I just need some space and some time to myself. Time to get back into the real life, and to my friends. I was alone for a long time. I kinda just wanna learn to live in this world again. And I think you do too."

I nodded.

"No, I understand. You're right."

"I think maybe you need to sort things out with your coven. Your family. Take care of yourself and find a way to live in this new world. Of course, if it's really bad and you have no place to go, you can stay here, I mean it's not my house anyway– "

"No, no, I'll figure something out. The last thing I'd want is to make you feel uncomfortable."

"Thank you, Kai."

I felt a large lump forming in my throat as I came to realize that I'd really fucked up. And she would need time. Time to forgive me and to ever possibly trust me again. The reason I felt this bad about it is because I knew that I'd have to stay away from her for a while. And it would probably be the most painful stretch of time I'd be forced to go through. Possibly more painful than my 18 years of imprisonment.

"I should probably go now."

Bonnie nodded and we both got up at the same time, the light-hearted Monopoly game had quickly turned into an awkward conversation as we walked towards the front door of the Salvatore boarding house.

"I- uh… Do you might if I visit from time to time? Just for a little bit. To see how you're doing and… maybe get my ass kicked at Monopoly again?"

She smiled awkwardly and hesitated for a few seconds. "Yeah... Maybe."

I nodded. I knew she was trying to be polite, but she really just wanted me to stay away. _So, I would stay away._

I made my way out the door and smiled at her that one last time.

"It was good making your acquaintance, Bonnie Bennett."

* * *

 **A/N: Soooo yes, I updated this. I don't know if anyone is still alive in the Bonkai community, but if you are let me know by leaving a review! I have another chapter coming up shortly after this (it's pretty much finished so you won't be waiting long) and I still have ideas and inspiration to continue so I'm gonna try my best to continue updating this story. Even if no one reads it xD**


	3. Chapter 3

Over the next few months, I'd taken it upon myself to learn to live a normal life in the world that I was in. After that day with Bonnie, I went straight to a train down to Portland. I was gonna visit my family and try to make amends, but to my surprise when I got there, the house was empty. They'd moved away. So, I was the leader of a coven and a family that wanted nothing to do with me. Sure, I could easily find them if I wanted to, but it was obvious that they didn't want to be found. Not by me at least.

I stayed in Portland for a while. Cleaned up the house, re-decorated a bit. But I got too lonely. I never really knew anyone there and I couldn't be bothered getting to know anyone. So shortly after that, I reached out to Damon again, this time without Bonnie's knowledge, and he managed to help me get a job and a place to stay, not too far from Mystic Falls. I'd worked in a video store, renting out DVD's, CD's and all. It gave me a chance to catch up on all the newest films and shows and man, there were many. It helped quite a bit, when it came to keeping my mind off of Bonnie.

Seeing as my job wasn't very profitable, I had to share the apartment I was staying at with a roommate. His name was Brad and he went to the same college as Ew-lena. He was in a different course, but I never gathered enough from our conversations to figure out which. Brad was a simple guy. To put it nicely.

Anyway. Damon and I had gotten closer over the months. He came into the store quite often to rent out some films for Bonnie, Elena and him and he'd ask me for suggestions while I'd question him about Bonnie. I tried to be subtle about it at first, but as his visits continued, I gave up on that concept and just straight-up asked him to tell me about her and about how she was doing. Recently I'd helped him with some magic for something that he was "researching," and in return he promised to talk me up in front of Bonnie.

"So, you remember those ascendants, right?" he asked me, leaning over the counter at my workplace.

"Unfortunately, they're very hard to forget."

"Are they the only way to get into the prison worlds?"

"I think so. I suppose it depends on how a specific prison world is created. But yes, they're bound to the ascendants."

"So, if you were to find the right ascendant for the right prison world, could you technically get into it?"

"Why are you asking me this, Damon?"

"Just answer the question."

"Yes. I could. I would still need the blood of the witch that created it though. It's kind of a key ingredient."

"Mmm.. Can't imagine it was anyone other than Sheila Bennett's lineage."

"Bonnie's gran? Damon, what are you going on about?"

"There's a prison world that Bonnie saw when she was trying to transport back. It was from 1903. And she got a recording of a woman trapped in it."

"And?"

"It was my mother."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So… You want to go back there? To get your mom out?"

"I don't know. That's what I've been debating for the past few months. I mean there's gotta be a reason she's trapped there. What if I let her out and… she does something horrible?"

"Well. I came out of a prison world. And look at me now!"

Damon raised his eyebrows, vaguely looking around the video store. "Congrats."

I shook my head, rolling my eyes at him.

"So what do you want me to do about this?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I was hoping maybe your family would have the ascendant somewhere in Portland, or at least more information on my mother and this prison world."

"And you want me to check it out?"

"Yes."

"What's in it for me?"

"I'll convince Bonnie to go with you."

"…"

"…"

"Deal."

Damon smirked and grabbed my shoulder. "I knew I could count on you," he winked.

* * *

"Long time no see, Parker."

Bonnie's voice snapped me out of my daydreams when she came out of the Salvatore boarding house with a small suitcase and a cute travel backpack that seemed to be shaped as a teddy bear and even had teddy bear legs and arms. Honestly, her obsession with stuffed animals seemed a bit ridiculous at her age. She was still younger than me in every aspect, but… A teddy-bear backpack?

I was sitting outside on the stone wall in front of the house, waiting for her. I had noticed her pick-up truck in front of the house so I'd already left my backpack in it. A normal one, shaped like a backpack.

"I'm just interested in how Damon convinced you to do this."

Bonnie chuckled quietly as we both began walking to the car and I helped her with her suitcase.

"Well, he's been a really good friend to me recently, so I kinda owed him. I hear you got a job."

"I do, yeah. Just down at the video store, close to the campus."

"Wow. Kai Parker, in the making."

I laughed a little and made my way around to the passenger's seat, as she hopped into the driver's then looked at me as if she'd figured something out.

"Hey this is our second trip to Portland together. Except, this time, I'm actually conscious."

"Okay… Let's not ruin this by dragging the past into it."

"Sorry. Had to."

We'd been driving for a few hours, listening to the music on the radio. We didn't talk much. The atmosphere was still slightly awkward between us and I had no idea how she truly felt about the idea of this road trip or of being near me again.

"Thanks for giving me space, by the way."

I looked towards her, a bit taken aback by her sudden words.

"I was just respecting what you asked for."

"I know. It's just – that's usually something that is difficult for people to understand. So I appreciate it."

I smiled at her, though I had no idea if she could see me or not. Her eyes were glued onto the road. Soon enough, the sun went down and those few extra hours of the same music on the same radio station had me going crazy.

"Okay, can we please change the radio station? If I have to listen to one more synthesized, auto-tuned half-sentence being repeatedly hammered into my brain over the same weird beat drop, I am going to commit a felony."

Bonnie laughed and reached forward to mess around with the radio until I heard 4 non blondes come on through one of them. "Ah, see I know that one! Can you imagine? A song with more that one line being repeated over and over again? Fascinating."

I sang along to the radio quietly, until I noticed Bonnie pulling over off of the highway and onto a motel parking lot.

"Oh, alright." I said excitedly.

"Don't even try to get the wrong idea."

She warned me as she hopped out of the car. We picked up our luggage and checked in at the front desk. Bonnie asked for a room with two single beds. For some reason I'd hoped that she would just get a double bed, but I knew that was something I could only dream about. Sharing a bed with Bonnie Bennett? I should be so lucky. Right now, just sharing a room with her had me at the edge of my nerves.

We went inside and dropped our things on the floor, next to each of the beds. I was already so tired at that point, I decided to just crawl into bed. Bonnie, however, went into the bathroom to have a shower. While she was there I couldn't stop my mind from imagining what the view in the bathroom had to offer. What it would look like to see Bonnie Bennett taking her clothes off and getting into a hot steaming shower. I shook my head after a while when I felt myself getting too warm. She came back into the room a few minutes later wearing her pyjama shorts and a T-shirt of a band I'd never heard of. One Direction? Must be a newer one. I put it on my subconscious checklist to check them out later.

She finally got into the bed next to mine and covered herself up. She laid on her back and typed up something on her phone, and then I noticed her scrolling through something on the screen for what seemed like an eternity. I didn't get this new phone trend. Looking at pictures and posts of other people instead of being present with the ones around you. Maybe I was just annoyed that she was ignoring me for a tiny lit up screen in her hands. Eventually, she turned the screen off and placed it on the end table between our two beds. Then she turned on her side and faced me. She kept her eyes closed at first, but then she slowly opened them, almost as if she was expecting to be met by my own, watching her intently.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked me.

"You." I said before I could stop my mouth. The next few seconds of her gaze felt like an eternity and I felt myself heating up from the nervousness that washed over me.

"Me? What about me?"

I took in a breath and allowed myself some more time to reply to her. We weren't in a rush.

"I was just… hoping you'd look at me."

Bonnie smiled.

"Well, I have been trying this new thing that someone taught me. Looking into people's eyes. And trying not to look away for as long as I can."

She said all this while keeping her gorgeous green pools positively glued to mine. I couldn't stop the smile on my lips when I realized she was talking about me.

"And how's that working out for you?"

"A lot people noticed it, actually."

"Yeah, I can imagine it wouldn't be easy to suddenly be stared at by Bonnie Bennett. Anyone would notice."

"Why's that?"

"You can be kinda scary."

"What? Me? Are you saying I scare you?"

"More than you might think."

"Huh… Interesting," she noted with a devilish smile on her face.

"Don't get any ideas in that witchy head of yours. I'm still the Gemini coven leader, I could kick your ass."

"A Parker kicking a Bennett's ass? I sincerely doubt it, but nice try."

"Don't push me, Bennett. I'll have you phasmatos-ed in three seconds."

"You couldn't even beat me at Monopoly _, Parker_."

"Is that a challenge for a do-over?"

We both laughed for a while until we eventually managed to calm down. I noticed that she'd never once broken our eye contact and for a moment I felt kinda proud of myself.

"Good night, Kai."

She said, before she turned around to face the other side.

* * *

 **A/N: Eyyy, two chapters in one day! Hope you guys like this, I'll try to continue with some more chapters over the next few days. I'm really inspired for this story all of a sudden so I'm gonna try not to waste it. Please leave a review and let me know if you liked it! Helps keep my hopes up that someone is actually reading this, even if it's just one person 3**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

To say I had a peaceful awakening would be an overestimation of biblical proportions. Bonnie flung a pillow at my face from across the room and for some reason she found it incredibly hilarious when I got frightened and fell to the floor. I'd already murmured a spell under my breath as I wasn't used to be woken up by – well, anything. So a defense spell was just a natural reaction for me. I hadn't realized where I was until I got up from the floor and noticed Bonnie suddenly got quiet. She was holding her throat and trying to gasp for air. That was when I realized what I was doing and I immediately dropped my spell, letting her take in a breath.

"Oh, my God. Bonnie, I am so sorry."

I stood shocked for a second, then walked up to her quickly to make sure she was breathing.

"Are you okay?"

I asked her, reaching up to her face with one of my hands, but she backed away from me and nodded slowly.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I should know better than to violently wake up a traumatized coven leader."

"I'm so sorry, Bonnie. I honestly didn't even realize what I was doing, it was just a reflex."

"It's okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I'll make a mental note not to do that again."

I nodded towards her but noticed how she kept backing away from me. Suddenly, I hated every fibre of my being. I _had_ to be more careful around her. I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I ever hurt her again, and I'm sure she wouldn't either.

* * *

"How much longer to your house?"

"About an hour. We're not too far away now."

Bonnie and I had been driving that whole day and hadn't spoken much after what happened in the morning. We settled on an alternative radio station, which played mostly acoustic songs. I didn't mind them, they were actually quite nice and seemed to compliment the sunny day outside. My only problem was that since we weren't talking, I was forced to listen to the lyrics of the songs that played. Before my merge, I couldn't see the point or meaning behind any song, or any piece of art in general. But as I was listening to them, I began to understand the emotions behind them a bit better. I could even relate to some of them. Scary, I know.

Soon enough, we got around to a familiar part of Portland and I navigated Bonnie through the streets and into the village where I used to live. We pulled up to the empty field at about 5 in the afternoon and I spoke out the Gemini spell to reveal the house.

"Just as we left it," Bonnie commented.

"Yeah… Well, not quite. My family seems to have moved out, so I threw out all of their useless shit and cleaned up the mess they've left."

I walked over to the back of the car and took out Bonnie's little suitcase, then made my way to the house with her. I didn't own a key for it, since the whole place was practically wrapped up in magic and I never actually remembered us locking the front door. Not that a disappearing house full of witches would ever need a lock anyway.

As hesitant as I was bringing Bonnie back into the house where I practically left her to die, I still had a bit of a growing excitement of finally "bringing a girl home". Even though there was no one to bring her home to. And she definitely wasn't thinking of it the same way I was. Either way, I was going to try my best to make her feel comfortable, especially after the mess I'd caused that morning.

"Wow, you're right. This does look a lot nicer than I remember it."

Bonnie walked into the living room and set her luggage down next to the sofa. She looked around and walked to examine family photos and sculptures around the fireplace. I prayed to God I wouldn't be in any of the family photos she was looking at, and well, knowing my family I probably had nothing to worry about.

"I'll cook us dinner tonight. For old times' sake."

I smiled at her and she nodded, so I left her to herself and went into the kitchen to figure out what I was going to cook for her. It had to be something impressive, I mean it was Bonnie Bennett that was going to be tasting it.

"Hey, where would your family keep the spellbooks and possible family secrets?"

I turned to see Bonnie standing in the door frame of the kitchen.

"Uhh.. I don't know, I was never really filled in on any of the important family information. But try my dad's study. It's just down the hall from the living room. He's got a pretty big library. But then again, that could be too much of an obvious place to search. Or maybe it's so obvious that it's obviously not obvious. Right?"

Bonnie rolled her eyes, but I noticed the smile spreading on her lips as she left the kitchen. I busied myself with making a list of groceries I'd need to get from the supermarket for the time we would be spending here, that was until I heard Bonnie's gasps coming from the study. I immediately let go of what I was doing and ran to where she was. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but she was mumbling to herself in disbelief while examining my father's books.

"What? Bonnie, what's wrong?"

"These are all spellbooks. I think. All of them," she answered as she continued to pull book after book from the shelf. They seemed to all be conveniently wrapped in covers of different fiction classics, like To Kill a Mockingbird, or Anna Karenina.

"Wow. If this is what they used to do on game-nights, I am suddenly not that pissed off that I never got invited."

We looked over the two shelves of books in my father's study, and about 70% of them were spellbooks. From a rough count, that was at least a hundred spellbooks we were meant to look over to find any mention of the 1903 prison world.

"Bon, we might be here a while."

She sighed, sitting down in the office chair.

"We best get started then."

"Yeah… You go right on, I'm gonna take a trip to the supermarket before they close."

"Get alcohol please, Kai!" she yelled after me.

"I like the way you think, Bennett!"

* * *

Three hours and two bottles of red wine into our research and Bonnie and I both seemed to be giving up on the concept of finding this damned ascendant. Bonnie's quiet tummy rumble brought my attention to the fact that we hadn't eaten yet.

"Ah man. I forgot to cook us up something. I'm gonna go do that now."

I said, getting up quickly.

"I'll join. If I have to stare at this for another second, I'll end up killing Damon when we get back."

I chuckled quietly as we moved to the kitchen. Bonnie took our glasses and opened a third bottle of wine, topping us both off. She hopped up on the kitchen island and I suddenly felt nervous about her watching me. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of her, so I prayed for the best possible outcome. The buzz from the alcohol kinda helped that.

For some reason, when I took a pan to fry up vegetables in, I thought it would be a great idea to _phasmatos-incendia_ the flames on, instead of using a lighter like a normal person. I felt proud of myself until I heard Bonnie chuckling from behind me. I felt her hand resting on my shoulder as she leaned in to whisper into my ear.

"Tryna impress a girl?"

Her lips lingered a bit too long next to my ear, so my goose bumps had to have been visible by the naked eye. Thankfully, maybe not a drunk naked eye. And Bonnie wouldn't be leaning against me if she wasn't drunk.

"You know I'm always trying to impress Bonnie Bennett, but she's a difficult one." I took the opportunity to flirt while my nerves were somewhat at ease. Flirting seemed to be so much easier when I didn't have emotions holding me back from saying things I wanted to say.

"Ah, how so?" she continued, her breath still lingering on my neck.

"Well… I hear she's one to hold a grudge. And I've done many questionable things in the past worthy of holding a grudge over."

"And do you think she'll forgive you?"

"I hope so. I want to do better for her."

I turned my head over my shoulder just enough to see her face leaned against it. We shared a silent exchange of looks before her eyes moved over to the stove.

"You're burning."

"What?"

It took me a second to realize I was so caught up in the moment that the sleeve of my shirt had caught fire. Before I could even think to do anything, Bonnie sung out a spell to extinguish the flame and then she proceeded burst into laughter. Well, I can cross "making a fool out of myself" off my list of things _not_ to do in front of Bonnie Bennett.

Bonnie jumped down from the counter, still using her hand as a support against my back and then she came around to stand next to me. Her palm traced my shirt as she moved until the warmth of her skin disappeared once she took the frying pan from me.

"Move over, I'll finish it."

I chuckled and moved over to the side slightly. And when I say slightly, I do mean only slightly. I stayed so close to her that our sides were touching and every move she made only brought her closer into me. She didn't seem to mind so I didn't see a reason to back away. I watched her as she stirred the veggies and I reached down to brush her hair out of her face. She looked at me for a moment until I let my hand down, then she smiled and continued with her cooking.

Bonnie looked up for a second, noticing salt on a shelf above her and she reached up to get it, but she was too short. _What an opportunity_. I smirked to myself, before standing directly behind her and purposely leaving no space between us. I reached up to the salt shaker she was so desperately trying to get to and I lowered it down into her hand.

"Thanks."

She breathed out heavily, before salting the food in front of her. I stayed in the same spot, right behind her and couldn't find it in me to move away from her. I wasn't pressed up against her or anything, but I knew she could feel my presence close to her. I reached up to her hair again and brushed it away from her shoulder, then I slowly let my fingertips trace the exposed skin of her neck. I noticed her breathing change.

"That looks good."

I whispered from behind her, talking about the food but not really looking at it. I let my hand slowly linger over her shoulder and then drop slowly along her arm where I squeezed it lightly. She didn't reply to me, and she didn't move.

"You want me to get the plates?"

I asked her quietly and she nodded. The tension I felt in that moment was almost unbearable and I found it hard to even breathe. Finally, I managed to part myself from her and took a few steps to the counter my family had kept their plates in. Once I'd gotten them out for Bonnie, she quickly spilled over the food into them and I noticed she was trying hard to avoid my gaze.

We sat down at the table and, save for the music coming for the living room, the kitchen was filled with awkward silence. I had no idea what to say to her and she was being uncharacteristically quiet. I didn't know if she was sucking up her food because she wanted to get away as soon as possible or because she was just genuinely that hungry.

"Are you alright?" I managed to mumble out a few minutes later.

"Yeah. I'm just tired. Where can I sleep?"

In conclusion, she was definitely looking to get away as soon as possible. She finished her food faster than I could even concentrate on beginning to eat.

"Uh… You can take my old room. I'll show you where it is."

She followed me up the stairs and to the end of the hallway where my room was. Once inside, I saw her expression change but I couldn't tell what she was thinking. She looked around the empty room for a little while, until she sat down on the bed and finally locked eyes with me again.

"Did you clear out your stuff?"

"No. I'm assuming my father did. Y'know after he locked me away to a prison world."

"So, he just… got rid of everything?"

"I guess."

"So…. What was here before?"

I half-smiled when I looked around the bare room and imagined what it looked like years ago. I walked over to my desk that was positioned in front of the window.

"This was always a mess. I had sketches and music notes. CDs. My Walkman. And some cassettes. Although I'd always keep dropping one down at the back of the-…"

I paused and reached down between the wall and the desk until my hand caught the familiar feeling of a cassette tape stuck between them. "Ah!" My smile grew instantly as I pulled it out and looked over to Bonnie who'd returned my happiness. I quickly pocketed the tape to listen to it later.

"Guess he didn't get rid of everything."

I continued walking around the room and pointed at the wall with lots of holes and marks on it.

"That's where I kept my guitar and my posters of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam and Oasis."

"Do you play?"

"Yeah, I did."

"What else?"

"Well," I started as I sat down on the bed next to her. "I used to have a big fat poster of Pamela Anderson in Baywatch right over there." I pointed at the empty space on the wall over the bedframe.

"I didn't know she was your type."

I chuckled softly and turned my gaze back to Bonnie.

"She isn't."

* * *

Bonnie and I spent most the following day outside on the front porch, going through what seemed like a billion grimoires and family spell books. I was losing hope that we would actually even find anything about the 1903 prison world or its ascendant. But I didn't really care as long as I got to spend time with Bonnie. She didn't say anything about what had happened the night before. Well, to be fair, nothing had really happened _. I stood close to her_. Yeah, I need to chill out and stop overthinking things that probably mean nothing.

When evening struck again, I heard Bonnie gasp silently on the lawn chair next to me, still holding a wine glass perfectly steady in her hand.

"What? Another secret Gemini spell you only dreamed of in your little Bennett repertoire?"

"No. There's a mention of the year 1902 here."

"That's great but we're looking for 1903, dumb-dumb."

"No, I'm getting to it. It describes a female vampire in Europe, also known as The Ripper…. Leaving trails of dead bodies and tearing through entire cities. Lillian Salvatore was finally stopped by the Gemini Coven in Manhattan on October 31st in 1903."

"Does it say anything about the ascendant?"

"The location of the ascendant is revealed or passed on to each new Gemini coven leader."

"Great. I'm assuming _daddy_ left me out of the loop on that one."

Bonnie sighed. It was dark out and the mosquitos were beginning to strike their prey on the generously lit porch of the Gemini house.

"We should head inside before we get eaten alive. I'll take a picture of this and send it over to Damon, there's some useful info on the actual prison world. And at least we have a lead now on where the ascendant is."

"Barely." I mumbled through my teeth at the thought of my father.

Bonnie and I headed back inside and up to my room where she had left her phone. I sat down on the bed and watched her take screenshots of the spell book after she placed her drink on my bedside table. Once she was done she put the book and her phone aside and reached back for her glass of wine on the end table. If she continued like this, I would begin to suspect she might have an alcohol problem. But thankfully, this was only her second glass of the night.

"So… Now that we have cracked the mystery of our roadtrip…. Maybe we can play a little game." I suggested. Bonnie sat down on the bed and leaned against the wall as she used the pillows to make her back more comfortable. I sat against the other wall and she placed her legs over mine so that they resembled a plus sign together.

"I'm listening."

"Truth or dare."

"Really?"

"Yes really. I never actually got to play that."

"You're _kidding_."

"No."

"Alright. Truth or dare?"

"Truth. I am an open book."

Bonnie raised an eyebrow at me and took a moment to think as she sipped on her drink.

"How does siphoning work? Like how did you figure out you were a siphon?"

"Pretty early on. I was 7 and I was playing outside with Jo one day and it just happened accidentally. I tried to grab some sort of toy from her and as soon as I touched her she started screaming and I didn't understand why. My parents came out and when they figured out what had happened they forbid me from touching anyone. Aaaand I pretty much had to wear gloves any time we would have a family gathering or someone coming over. Or anytime I wanted to go outside or be near any other witch."

"They forbid you from…. Touching anyone?"

"Yeah. Eventually I just kind of gave up on trying to make an effort in the family. Pretty much spent all my days in here, I didn't want to see anyone. Jo sometimes came into my room to play with me or hang out. Sometimes she would let me siphon her so we could practice magic together. That is until dad caught her and called me an abomination for the first of many times."

"How old were you then?"

"Twelve."

"Your father called his 12-year-old kid an abomination?"

"Yes."

Suddenly, reliving this story and opening up to Bonnie made me flash back to those time and I began to experience a different sort of emotion towards this. My mind got all foggy and I honestly couldn't remember the last time I felt this bad about myself. I couldn't stop thinking about my family and how they threw me away like a piece of garbage without even giving me a chance.

"Jesus…" Bonnie shook her head. "Well.. Uh, it's your turn."

"Truth or dare?" I asked.

"Dare."

"Kiss me."

I gulped subtly after the words escaped my mouth. I said them almost instantly after she spoke and I didn't even know why, but they were out now and it was too late to take them back. The tension in the room became blatantly obvious. Bonnie stared at me for a few long moments before she moved away from the wall and leaned in closer towards me. There wasn't a lot of space separating us to begin with, but now I felt the tiniest inches that were blocking my way to her lips like little razor blades cutting at my need for her.

She held the glass of wine still steady in her hand while she intertwined one of her legs further with my own. She inched a bit closer, and I was way past belief that she might actually do this. Would she?

Bonnie leaned her forehead on mine, just like that night months ago when I pleaded her to say that she felt the same way I did. Her breath got heavy and so did mine. There was no denying it at this point. She _had_ to feel this too. I was sure of it. A strand of hair falling from her messy bun tickled my face and I slowly reached up to pull it behind her ear, then rested my palm against her soft cheek. My thumb slowly traced over her skin while she breathed right next to my mouth.

We stayed like that for a while, slowly inching closer to one another, allowing our noses to touch, and breaths to mix. I'd brushed my lips against hers several times by then and was just waiting to feel them on mine fully. In that moment, I heard Bonnie's phone go off, but as soon as it did she muttered a spell under her breath and silenced it. She hadn't moved an inch. She was still right there in front of me.

I realized that maybe she was too scared to take the first step. Maybe even more scared than me. Although I'm not sure if that was possible because I was dying inside.

And then I did it. I pressed my lips against hers and held them there for possibly too long. But she didn't move away. She kept her lips tightly pressed against mine. Then I slowly pulled away for a moment as we both took in a breath, before I went in for another one. This time I took it gentler and allowed our lips to part before reconnecting them again.

She responded to each kiss I gave her and she gifted them right back. She only ever pulled away for long enough to catch her breath and I couldn't believe the impact I was making on her. She seemed to struggle with her breath, but then again, I didn't blame her because I was probably shaking too. It must have been at least 5 minutes later that I realized we were kissing for quite a long time.

I opened my eyes slightly and pulled away, but just barely. It was only enough for me to reach down to take her glass of wine out of her hand and set it aside on my night table. Then I brought that hand right back onto her cheek and kissed her again. I felt her palm wrapping gently around my forearm while her lips continued to dance along mine. Another 5 minutes must have passed and nothing changed. I was so grateful she still hadn't pulled away from me because I could have kept kissing her for the rest of my life.

I gently sucked her bottom lip into my mouth and heard her catching her breath right after. Then I pulled away and placed a kiss on her cheek, slowly trailing down to her neck. As soon as I made my first mark on it, I could hear her moan softly into my ear. I couldn't wait too long to kiss her lips again though. I was aching for it as soon as they parted and I couldn't imagine being away for them for too long anymore. Not now that I've gotten a taste of them.

So I kissed her again, but this time a bit more passionately than before. I made sure to give her space and still be gentle, but she seemed to follow my rhythm perfectly without any struggle. All of a sudden, she took in a sharp breath and pulled away.

"Bon? Are you alright?"

She shook her head.

"Do you want to stop?"

She nodded.

"Alright."

I pulled away from her immediately and retracted my hand from her face. I was instantly overflown by crippling fear and regret and I could feel my anxiety building up in my chest. I should have waited longer. I shouldn't have done it so soon. I might have just ruined everything and she would hate me forever and never want to see me again.

Bonnie had closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

"I'm so sorry, Bonnie. I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't-"

"No."

"…what?"

"No, it's fine. You didn't do anything wrong, I just… I… don't think I've ever felt this way before."

"You mean, in... In a good way or?"

"Yeah. In a good way."

"Oh."

I gulped. My anxiety had immediately quieted down as I watched her and tried to make sense of the situation. Bonnie Bennett had never felt this way before with anyone else, but… me?

"I'm sorry I just… Needed a minute to process this," she said.

"That's alright."

I paused.

"So, um… What do you want me to do now?" I asked her carefully. I was so on edge with all of my emotions, and sincerely confused about what to do.

"Kiss me again."

She opened her eyes to look at me when she said that, and I didn't waste a moment to reach back over to her and kiss her like it was the only thing I'd been waiting to do my whole life. She responded slowly and then we kissed like that. For quite a while. I don't even know how long it had to have been when I heard Bonnie's phone ring again. She sighed into my mouth and I chuckled softly.

"It's okay… Just take it."

I said between kisses. She pulled away hesitantly and nodded. I sat back to relax for a moment and catch my breath as I watched her answer the phone.

"Hey, Damon… Yeah, sorry about that, my phone was in another room so I must have not heard it… Uh-hum. Yeah… Oh, he is?"

Bonnie's tone suddenly changed.

"Right. Um. Well, I guess we'll be back in like a day or two… Yeah, alright, say hi to them for me. See you then."

She hung up the phone and then reached for her wine, downing what was left in the glass.

"Everything alright?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. Damon's just wondering when we'll be back. Could you get us some more wine and then we can get back to the truth or dare?"

"Sure."

I hopped off the bed and headed downstairs to the kitchen where I found an open bottle of wine. On my way back I noticed something peaking out of Bonnie's tiny bear backpack and for a moment I swore I saw my name somewhere on it. I couldn't help my curiosity so I reached for it and pulled out a notebook with what looked like Bonnie's journal. The title of the page that it was flipped to made my heart race.

It read: _WAYS TO KILL KAI PARKER._

* * *

 **A/N: YAY, another update. This one is quite long. Twice as long as the last chapter actually. HAHAHA, hope you will appreciate that. But yeah, anyways, please let me know what you think and I'll hopefully have a new chapter up soon, since I've finally wrapped my head around where I want this story to go.**


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

My blood was boiling. Was this all a god damned trick? Did she just bring me out here to get me vulnerable so she could kill me? Get revenge on everything I had done to her? Was Damon in on this as well? Was he just pretending to be my friend for the past few months? He must have told her about my feelings for her and now she was just using them against me to make me feel like a fool for ever believing she could like me.

 _You got me good this time, Bonnie Bennett._

As I walked up the stairs, probably fuming out my ears, I thought of about a dozen spells I could use on her before she even knew what was happening. If she thought I was just going to let her win because of my feelings for her, she thought dead wrong. I wasn't going to have this, to give her the satisfaction of thinking she fooled or hurt me. Hurt _me…_ Heck, like I haven't been let down by every single person in my life, she's kidding herself if she thinks this is going to affect me.

"That's a nifty little plan you schemed up, Bon, I'm honestly impressed."

I started as I walked in the bedroom, reminding myself of the way I used to speak and feel before the merge.

"What are you talking about?"

Bonnie raised an eyebrow and I held up the notebook I'd found.

"Kai, that's not even – wait, you went through my stuff?!"

"Was this your plan all along?"

"What _plan_? Do you even know what you're talking about? Did you even read that?"

"W-…" I wanted to reply to her because my anger was piling up inside me and it wanted desperately to be let out, but in that moment, I realized I didn't even give it a second thought to read the list. "Well, no."

"Go on then," she crossed her arms over her chest. "Read it. Out loud."

I swallowed, my anger slowly fading into guilt as I scanned my eyes over the page.

"Number one: stuff pork rinds into Kai's throat, mouth and nose until he can no longer breathe or smirk at you and he suffocates. Number two: wait until he falls asleep, then set his stupid hair on fire. Number three: gouge out his stupid blue eyes with a pen. Number four: Throw jam at his- Hey wait, you technically killed me with a pen once."

Bonnie rolled her eyes, clearly not amused with my accusations.

"And did you notice in your snooping of my private journal what date this was written on?"

I gulped and scanned the page until my eyes landed on the upper right corner of the page.

"It says: _May fucking 10th, 1994_."

"Yeah. That was my prison world journal. So, whatever you were thinking, unthink it. And give me that back!"

She got up to get the journal from me, but I took a few steps back and kept it high where she couldn't reach it.

"Wait, I wasn't done reading it! Number five-"

"No, give me it!"

"Num – number five!" I struggled to read as I pushed away her attempts to grab it, "Fly him out to Italy and torture him with _Roman torture devices_ – Jesus, Bon, that's morbid! Even for you!"

"Okay, Kai if you don't give me that back right now-"

"Number six: sit on his face until he can't breathe anymo– Oh, wow, Bon–"

"Motus!"

She used a spell to push the journal out of my hand and sent it flying into the wall. She pushed past me and ran to grab it off the floor, whilst I couldn't help myself from chuckling loudly.

"I mean, all you had to do was ask…. Naughty girl."

Bonnie turned around to face me and I could see the clear annoyance in her eyes, but I simply couldn't stop laughing. Next thing I knew, she had flung the journal right at my head before I could even react.

"Ow! Jesus!"

"That's what you get for snooping!"

After the whole drama about Bonnie's indecent journal wishes was over, she complained some more because, in the midst of my discovery, I forgot to bring the bottle of wine she had requested back up to the bedroom. She went to get it herself and didn't even bothering pouring it into the glasses anymore. So, for a few hours, we shared the bottle and talked. She told me these incredible childhood stories that I could only dream of having experienced like her. She told me about her gran a lot. The rest of her family was never particularly involved in her life, so I could understand why she cared about her gran so much. It was kinda like me with Jo. Jo was the only one who paid attention to my existence in our coven which is why I had a sweet spot for her, even in my darkest days. I told Bon all about this, and she listened. She didn't interrupt me or ask me stupid questions, she just… let me talk.

Once our conversation subsided, I noticed her dozing off next to me. I was still yammering out small talk, but I could see her eyes shutting as she tried to listen. Eventually, she'd fallen asleep next to me, just slightly turned away from me. I watched her breathing for a few minutes until I felt my head get heavy too. I carefully wrapped my arm around her and pulled her back into me. She shifted around a little, until she settled with her back aligned to my chest perfectly, so I assumed she must have still been awake.

"Is this okay?" I asked her quietly, so as to not wake her in case she _was_ asleep. Her small hand traced my forearm all the way down to my hand where I felt her fingers intertwining with mine. She then rested her arm on top of mine and nodded, bringing herself a bit closer into me. "Yeah," she mumbled.

* * *

I woke up at the sound of the front door shutting. Judging by the light coming in from the window, I'd assumed it was about 5 in the morning. My very first thought was that Bonnie had left me, but she was still warm in my embrace. She'd faced towards me and her head was buried in my chest with my arm still draped around her. I listened in for any noise from downstairs and when I didn't hear anything, I assumed it was a dream, closed my eyes and pulled Bonnie closer into me.

Suddenly, a thud.

I knew I wasn't dreaming this time.

"Bon?" I whispered.

"Mmh," she replied as she shifted in my arms.

"Someone's in the house," I continued, in a hushed voice.

"What?" she whispered right back, and we both sat up in the bed slowly. The noises from downstairs continued and I told Bonnie to stay where she was while I made my way out the bedroom quietly. I followed along the corridor and carefully climbed down the steps until I saw someone rummaging through drawers in the living room.

"Hey buddy, you picked the wrong house to rob," I alerted the intruder, preparing myself to whoop his ass with magic. Instead of running away or fighting me like I suspected he would, he sighed.

"I really hoped you wouldn't be here, Kai," he said as he turned around to face me.

"Dad."

"Hi, son."

"What are you doing here?" I could feel my anger crackling through my voice.

"Relax. I lost my pendant, the one I used to always keep next to the TV, I wanted it back. Did you see it?"

I knew exactly what pendant he was talking about. The one with a picture of Jo inside. The one he tried to melt to kill her so that _I_ wouldn't be able to _destroy_ this family.

"I must have chucked it out. With the rest of your shit. Did a bit of redecorating."

He watched me silently for a few moments and I looked back at him. I'm sure he could see the anger and the disappointment in my eyes. He could probably even see that I was still hoping he would accept me, or care about me in the slightest. But if he did, he definitely did nothing to show it.

"Where's Jo, dad?"

"She doesn't wanna see you."

I swallowed hard to stop myself getting emotional at his words or his presence. Suddenly I heard a step creaking behind me and we both turned to see Bonnie coming down the staircase. I had almost forgotten she was here.

"You must be Bonnie. You're Sheila's kid? You look just like her." my dad said when he saw her and as soon as he began to approach her I felt myself tense up.

"Her granddaughter, yeah."

My dad walked even closer and extended his arm to introduce himself, but I stepped in front of Bonnie before he could come any closer. I knew I could never trust my dad and I wasn't about to risk him pulling any kind of magic trick on Bonnie. If he could go to the lengths of trying to kill his own daughter and trapping his son in hell, what obstacle is the last remaining Bennett witch to him?

"No handshakes." I smiled, letting him know I wasn't going to let him come near her.

"It's okay, Kai." Bonnie said from behind me, then grabbed my hand and stood next to me. "It's nice to meet you."

"Likewise. I'm Joshua Parker, but I'll assume you knew that," my father replied to her and I was thankful he had kept his distance. His eyes soon plunged down to notice Bonnie's hand in my own.

"Did your little siphoning trick disappear with the merge?" he asked.

"No, dad. I learned to control it. You know, during those 18 years in imprisonment. Didn't have much else to do and no one else was going to volunteer to teach me, were they?"

He kept quiet for a few seconds and stared right at me. I could feel Bonnie's thumb tracing light circles on my hand, as I tried to figure out what he was thinking. Then his eyes turned to Bonnie again and he nodded politely before backing away towards the front door.

"I'm sorry I disturbed you. Please, let me know if you ever find that pendant."

"Duly noted," I said sarcastically.

"Nice to meet you again, Bonnie. Goodbye now."

"Bye," Bonnie replied to him when she noticed that I wasn't going to.

* * *

After a few extra hours of sleep, I woke to find Bonnie packing up our things and making food for our trip back home. It was a quiet morning cuz I wasn't feeling particularly talkative after the visit from my dad, and I figured Bonnie wasn't speaking because she noticed my mood swing. I was pretty much feeling like absolute shit since the moment he walked out, and I had no idea why. I couldn't stop it. I just didn't feel like talking. I didn't feel like doing anything really.

Thankfully, Bonnie didn't make me. We were back out on the road sooner than I'd hoped for and it didn't seem like Bonnie was about to make us stop at a motel again. We made a few pit stops along gas stations on the way, but she kept on driving even when it was past midnight. Frankly, I was a little bit worried, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. My emotional state seemed to be at a new low that I didn't even recognize. So low, in fact, that I couldn't be bothered even looking at Bonnie.

I must have drifted off somewhere through the night, but I woke up the next morning when we pulled up into the Salvatore's driveway once again. Let me be clear, the exact thing that woke me up was Bonnie slamming the driver's door once she got out.

I didn't even really get a chance to wake up so I watched her walking over to the house and before she even made it to the front door, someone had already opened it. I was assuming Damon must have heard us so he went to greet her, but to my unfortunate surprise, it was Jeremy who opened the door, jolted out and gave Bonnie a big hug. Then, to my even more unfortunate surprise, he kissed her.

In all of this struggle to get Bonnie's forgiveness, I must have forgotten one little detail. She already had a boyfriend. I suppose, given recent events, she must have forgot she had one as well.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews, guys, I'm glad there's still people out there enjoying this story! Also I feel like I keep giving u guys some good Bonkai moments and then completely ruining them HAHA but I just imagine that's kind of how their dynamic would be had they continued on the show. Constant ups and downs... Thanks again for reading!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Warning for Mature Content (M) in the following chapter.**

* * *

If I didn't know any better I could have told you that my heart took a trip to Mars upon seeing Jeremy Gilbert standing in front of the Salvatore house and kissing up on the girl whose lips I tasted myself less than 48 hours ago. Given the response she'd had to Jeremy's warm welcome, I figured she wanted to keep what happened between us a secret. _A slip up_. Because she probably forgot that Jerome existed. Which totally inspires great hope in her investment with this particular relationship. But don't listen to me too much, it's mostly just the jealousy talking.

Damon came out of the house a few moments later and headed in my direction so I forced myself to finally get out of the car. I slammed the door shut and leaned on the hood of the car as Damon stood before me. I still had an immaculate view of Jared and Bonnie over Damon's shoulder.

"Any progress on the ascendant? Bonnie didn't say much over the phone."

"Some. I see Jerome has decided to grace us with his presence for the first time in months, has he?"

"Yeah, I guess he decided he wants to stay in Mystic Falls after all. Anyway, do you know where the ascendant is then?" Damon asked. Bonnie and Jeremy still seemed to be hugging and laughing in front of the house.

"Does he do that often? Up and leave when his girlfriend is in danger and then come back when it suits him?" I pressed on.

"Jeremy has never been the most reliable guy, I can tell you that." Damon scoffed. "Where's the ascendant?"

"Reliable how? Has he done something to her before?"

"Let's just say he's easily susceptible to drugs and ghosts of his previous girlfriends. Did you at least get a lead on the location or a spell, though?"

"Ah, so the holy Jeremiah isn't perfect after all. But he sure knows how to pop up at just the right time."

"Jesus Kai, the ascendant! Can you focus- wait." Damon stopped in his persistence. "What do you mean at the _right time_?"

I sighed heavily, keeping my eyes glued on Bonnie, until she finally looked away from her boyfriend and noticed me staring. She didn't take up the challenge of a stare-off this time though. No, she looked away quicker than she could plunge a knife into one's heart.

"We didn't find the ascendant." I finally looked at Damon for the first time in our conversation. "She brought some grimoires with her to translate them for a lead or something. Tell her I said bye."

I turned away from Damon ready to walk in misery back to my apartment.

"Kai. You didn't answer my question!" I heard Damon shouting from behind me but at that point I was too upset to care, and especially to talk to anyone. Even if it was Damon. Dare I say, I trusted him and thought of him as my best friend, but I was so angry I knew I needed to get out of Bonnie's sight.

I got back to my apartment an hour later, after taking several detours around town to lengthen my walk in hopes of exhausting my rage. No such luck. Eventually I made it up the stairs of my building and I tried to find the keys to my apartment door in my roadtrip backpack, but after rummaging for two minutes without success I could feel my anger getting triggered up even more so I decided to unlock the damn door with magic. When I took my coat off, I realized that the keys were in my pockets all along. A deep sigh of frustration came over me as I tried to contain myself in that moment. I was literally moments away from breaking something or murdering someone.

"Oh hey bro! How was the roadtrip?"

My flatmate Brad peeked out of the kitchen and gestured for me to join him. I rolled my eyes and gritted my teeth. The last thing I needed right now was Brad's dumb-as-rocks company.

"Terrific." I replied sarcastically, heading into the kitchen behind him.

"That bad, huh? What happened, bro?" Brad asked me as he took out a chilled microwaveable dish from the fridge and began to unpack it. As I said before, Brad was a simple guy. The kind of guy that had a stack of microwaveable dishes in the fridge for every meal of the day. And also the kind of guy who had 7 pairs of the exact same white shirt that he wore every day under his university's letterman jacket. He was a perfect roomate if there ever was one but I didn't expect wise advice from him. Couldn't hurt to tell him though, he would probably forget it the next day anyway.

"Well it was going good at first."

"You went with that hot chick Bonnie, right?"

"Yeah."

"The one you have a crush on?"

"Yeah... wait I never told you that."

"You talk about her all the time, bro. It's not that hard to figure out."

"Oh wow, you actually have deducing skills, Brad. Guess I learn something new every day."

"What does deducing mean?"

"Forget it. Anyway, yeah, I went with Bonnie. We were there for two days and things were going uncharacteristically well. Although we were under alcoholic influence for the most part of it. But um..." I paused. "We had a moment. Or a few, actually. We kissed."

"Whoa, that's dope! I'm so happy for you."

"Yeah thanks, but uh.. She has a boyfriend, it turns out."

"Oh shit, bro."

"Listen, Brad. I'm seconds away from going on a killing spree and if you say 'bro' one more time I can promise you, you will be the first victim."

"Oh, sorry, bro."

"Brad."

"Shit, sorry."

I let out a sigh of irritation but I settled down on a chair in the kitchen. Brad's microwave dinner finally beeped and he took it out, along with his plastic fork and then he sat down opposite me.

"So, what are you gonna do?" He asked me. "I mean she's too hot."

"Stop saying that or I'll rip your head off, Brad."

"Empty threats, Kai. I've heard that too many times to think you'd actually do it."

"So you say," I mumbled.

"What?"

"Nothing. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean, what can I do? She has a boyfriend already and she's happy with him."

"Can't be that happy if she kissed you."

* * *

A few weeks went by and Bonnie avoided me like the plague. At first, she ignored my texts so I figured she might not have wanted to alarm Jeremy. So I tried talking to her face to face, but she scrambled out of every opportunity I got. She thought of excuses not to see me. Said she was busy, had work to do or was going somewhere. We would talk later. Later never came.

I worked with Damon to figure out the whereabouts of the ascendant that he was looking for, but she managed to slip out of the house without so much as a hello every single time I came over. He noticed that something was off and questioned me about it endlessly because _she_ had apparently refused to talk about it. I never told him anything, as a courtesy to Bonnie. She had made it clear she didn't want anyone to know that she so much as looked at me in _that_ way. And come to think of it, I understood less and less why I kept her secret if she didn't have enough respect to give me an explanation. Hell, respect even to look me in the eye.

After having a few shots of tequila served to me by Matt Donovan at the Unity Grill, I had completely lost my edge and all of my carefulness around approaching Bonnie Bennett had faded. Now I was just angry. Angry at her. Maybe I didn't have a right to be, but from where I stood she had willingly kissed me for an entire evening while she was still knowingly in a relationship with someone else. And then, once that someone else came back into her life, she threw me out like a dog into the street. And I wasn't about to let her get away with that unpunished.

I walked out of the grill and across the road, heading over to the Salvatore house. I had no idea what I was going to do but I knew from my conversations with Damon that Bonnie was still staying there and that she didn't allow Jerm-face to stay with her. So, at 2 in the morning, a tequila-induced Kai thought it would be the perfect time to finally face her after weeks of radio silence.

Minutes later, I was standing at the entrance of her room in the Salvatore mansion. With my magic senses heightened I noticed Damon's presence, asleep, a few rooms down the hallway, so I opened the door to Bonnie's bedroom quietly. She was asleep too. I walked in and closed the door behind me softly, but she was a light sleeper. She heard me and sat up in the bed, rubbing her eyes to try to open them.

"Kai?"

She called out and by that point I was already standing next to her bed. I didn't know what I would do, I just knew that I was angry and I wanted to make her feel ashamed for what she did to me. I wanted to get some sort of revenge on her. But maybe using magic wasn't my only option.

"Is that you?"

She called out again. But I didn't answer her and I didn't wait for her to come to her senses. I decided to follow my instincts and just do what they told me to. So I propped up one of my knees onto her bed and I leaned down to crash my lips on hers with absolutely no hesitation. I immediately began to kiss her passionately, with so much force that I found myself laying on top of her within the next few seconds. By that point she had most certainly come to her senses and I could feel the surprise and the heat in her body. She definitely didn't hate this. I didn't kiss her for long though. I moved my head over to her neck and left messy kisses along her collarbone. I hadn't shaved in a few days so I knew my stubble must have made it harder for her to hold back her moans.

"Kai... are you drunk?"

She tried pushing me away miserably but kept moaning at every kiss I left on her skin. I moved my lips over hers again.

"It can just be a secret, right?"

I mumbled aggressively against her lips and I could tell that made her question my intentions. But I didn't give her enough time to think. Instead, I moved myself down along her tank top trailing my hands at the sides of her body, until I reached her pajama shorts. That was when I brought her tank top up just slightly and left a few soft kisses on her stomach. I could tell she was nervous and confused, but I also noticed her hot heavy breathing and those few occasional moans that she tried so hard to hold back.

My heart was racing when I grabbed the edges of her shorts and pulled them down over her hips. She wasn't wearing any underwear.

"Kai, what are y-"

I didnt give her a chance to finish her question as I had already put my mouth on her. She cut herself off with a sharp breath, and then she exhaled slowly, her entire body shivering slightly. She started to moan quietly as I glided my hungry tongue against her sweet spot. Truth be told I had never done this before, but I'd seen a fair amount of adult films during my entrapment to know the basics of what I was supposed to do. And the way she reacted told me more than I needed to know. She grabbed my hand and held onto it tightly - tighter when she liked what I was doing.

So I kept at it. Harder and faster. Her moans got louder and my touch got hungrier. The heat that radiated off of her skin gave me all the indication that she was in no way thinking of stopping this. And that was exactly what I wanted. I needed to show her that she was in the wrong here. I needed her to know that she wasn't the one pulling the strings and that she should be ashamed of what she did. So I continued, and I waited. I waited for that precise moment when her hips bucked and she began to shake to pull my mouth away from her.

Her eyes shot open and she looked at me. I knew she was about to complain that I stopped but when her eyes met mine, her voice died down instantly. She knew I did it on purpose.

I got off the bed slowly, her shorts still in my hand and my eyes still locked on her. She lay on the bed, her knees closed to hide the the exposed skin. I chuckled briefly at the sight of her, confused and embarrassed. Then I tossed her shorts on the floor, away from the bed, knowing she would have to shamefully walk over to get them once I'm gone. I gave her one last thought to think about.

"Give little Gilbert my best, will you?"

And with that, I was gone.

* * *

 **A/N: Has it really been a year since I updated this? Wow... For some reason, I got the urge to read up on my old fanfics this morning and I logged in to find that I had written chapter 6 here but never published it. So there you go. At this point, I suppose I cannot promise that I will continue this, but I have been focused on writing a lot more these days, so there's definitely a good chance. I have missed this. Anyone still here? Anyone still reading this? Anyone else's heart still entrapped by Bonnie and Kai? Yeah.**


	7. Chapter 7

Founder's Day was fast approaching and Mystic Falls was lit up in every sense of the word. Everyone was excited for the celebration; there was to be a float at first light, festival activities throughout the day and a Founder's Ball at the high school in the evening. Thanks to Damon's unstoppable yammering, I knew that Matt Donovan would be serving drinks at the ball, that Elena was coming from university with Caroline to attend as Damon's date, and that Jo and Alaric might make an appearance as well. He showed up at my video store in a fancy suit with a dark blue tie to ask my opinion. I wasn't keen on the tie but he mentioned it having to fit with Elena's dress. They were _apparently_ recreating the first time they ever danced together. Barf.

"Hey, why don't you come as well?" Damon asked. I noticed a girl standing behind him with a DVD in her hands, waiting to rent it out.

"Well... I don't have a suit."

"Well, I've got a guy who can get you one fitted today."

" _Well._.. I'm at work till 5."

" _Well._ Then give me your size and I'll pick it up."

Another man joined the line behind Damon.

"Why do you want me to go this thing anyway?"

"Cuz. It'll be fun," his eyes widened as he spoke, clearly trying to get me excited. "You remember what fun is? Come on, I'm trying to help here."

"Why?"

"... Well, for one you're not done getting my mother back."

"Mhm... And for two..? Three?"

He paused, squeezing his eyes a bit as he refused to say what he had truly been meaning to say. Then he finally spit it out.

"I _need_ my drinking buddy, okay?"

I couldn't help but stifle back a laugh at the fact that Damon had considered me his friend. I was glad, though. I never had any.

"So?" he pushed.

"Is Bonnie gonna be there?"

"Do you... want her to be there or do you not-"

"That's not what I asked, Damon."

"Yeah, she'll be there."

I sighed. A queue was now formed behind Damon. I knew he wasn't gonna move until I gave him an answer. I hadn't seen Bonnie ever since that night that I got immensely drunk and stumbled into her room to humiliate her. I didn't know what I could have possibly said to her after that vengeful incident so I kept to my apartment and my workplace. I opted against wandering into Mystic Falls until I had thought of something to say.

"Okay fine." I said.

"I will see you tomorrow, Malachai." he clapped his hands together and I nudged him away from the counter.

"Yeah, yeah, just get outta my store already."

* * *

I spent a good hour in front of the mirror that morning. Damon had dropped off a suit the previous evening and this was officially the first time I'd worn one. Well, at least for the world to see. And for her to see. For some reason, I felt as though the sleeves were just a bit short. Or maybe it was the tie. There was something off with tie. Damon, of course, convinced me everything looked perfect and that I could pick up any girl I wanted from the ball. I wasn't so sure. Not any. And definitely not the one I wanted. Might have screwed that up.

Damon knew something happened, but he was kind enough not to ask me anything about it. He had to have heard something that night. Christ, we were in a room right next to his. He tried to hide it, I think - Knowing what we did. Well, what I did. But Damon wasn't a very good liar.

He picked me up at 7 in the evening, then said we had to get Elena and Caroline from their university halls. We'd be back in time for the ball. I, of course, enquired about Bonnie's whereabouts and who would be picking her up.

"She's at the Lockwood mansion with Jeremy. They're probably just gonna walk from there."

I scoffed.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. Am I supposed to be Caroline's date?"

"God help you if you are."

I nodded in agreement.

* * *

About two hours later, the ball at the high school was in full swing. The gym was decorated almost like a wedding venue, and there were several tables to sit at with snacks and warm food. That's exactly where I was. Stuffing my face to avoid having to pretend to be Caroline's date. I could tell she didn't want me to be. Both her and Elena were still wary around me. They might not have thought I noticed, but I saw the looks they exchanged when they were in my presence, and the way they followed me around carefully as if I might lash out and do something monstrous. After a while, Jo walked in with Alaric. She saw me first and I noticed her whispering something to him. Then they occupied the table farthest from me. Bonnie wasn't there.

Suddenly, a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Elena standing behind me. She was wearing that dark blue dress Damon had told me about and she clearly spent one too many hours on curling her hair.

"Want to dance?" she asked.

"Uhh.. I don't really-" she nudged her head and raised her eyebrow at me, to which I murmured out a "fine" and got up to follow her. We walked to the middle of the gym where several overdressed couples were swaying to a slow song. Elena took my right hand and stretched it out to the side with hers on top, then placed my left hand on her waist. I knew how to slow dance. Somewhat.

"So.. To what do I owe _this_ pleasure?" I probed, unsure as to why she'd approached me.

"Damon's been talking about you. A lot."

"Anything inspiring?"

"He just... seems to be getting along with you really well."

"And that worries you." I concluded.

"It makes me wonder."

"You don't trust me."

"I want to."

"Because he does?"

"Because I don't want to worry." she said.

"You know, for a girl who fell in love with a vampire whose victim count is more than likely higher than his actual age, you seem to be extremely judgemental."

She paused for a second, staring me blankly in the eye.

"I'm also worried about Bonnie." she continued. I flinched at the sound of her name and I was sure Elena could feel me tense up.

"And why's that? I haven't spoken to her in weeks."

"I know you have feelings for her, Kai."

I gulped.

"And how could you possibly know that?" I retorted in sarcasm. We both knew Damon couldn't keep his mouth shut for the life of him.

"Let her be. My brother's a good guy." she said. I was about to reply but I stopped myself. The anger was welling up in me and that was never a good sign.

"What?" Elena asked.

"I'm tired." I said.

"Tired of what?"

"Don't patronize me, Elena. Not when you don't know what you're talking about."

"What are you saying?"

"You think her morals are still in the same place as they were 5 years ago? Are yours?"

With that, I'd officially confused the living hell out of Elena Gilbert. Not that that was difficult, per se. Her IQ probably equaled out at 1 point higher than that of her brother. I took in a deep breath and walked off the dance floor, leaving Elena standing alone in the middle. I was about to head for the front door, but stopped myself when I saw Bonnie and Jeremy walking in through it. Her eyes met mine for split second across the room then wandered off in another direction. I watched them for a moment as they walked over to the table where Damon, Caroline, Jo and Alaric were sitting. Elena eventually joined them. And I decided to stay after all.

* * *

I sat at a table by myself, occasionally eyeing the situation in the gym. Caroline seemed to be going hard on the drinks. Damon and Elena had danced a few songs out but settled quickly back at their table. Damon looked over towards me every so often, apologetically. Bonnie and Jeremy sat at the table since they walked in. Bonnie was quiet from what I could tell. She never looked towards me, not once. It was like I didn't exist. After a while, Damon asked her to the dance floor and she agreed. They danced for a while. About two or three songs. That was when I decided to walk over to them. We couldn't ignore each other forever.

"Mind if I cut in?" I asked Damon as I approached them.

"Sure," he grinned and looked at the both of us one by one. "Play nice."

Bonnie didn't look overly pleased to see me, and she kept looking back at the table towards Jeremy. Perhaps she was wondering if he would mind, if he would realize that something was wrong, if he would notice even. He didn't. In fact I don't think he even looked at her since they came in. _I did_. The whole time.

"Don't worry, your boy-toy isn't watching."

"What do you want, Kai?"

"To dance."

She sighed sternly and looked down at my hand as I stretched it out for her to take. She paused for a few seconds but took it anyway. I placed my other hand on her waist and was suddenly overflown by memories of the recent drunken events. That moment when my hands were running down the sides of her body. I could feel heat rising up under my palm and I cleared my throat. Perhaps this conversation wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"Damon asked me to come."

A scoff.

"Not everything revolves around you." I retorted.

"Excuse me?"

"Bon, you can't keep doing this."

"Doing what exactly?"

"Pretending like everything is my fault."

She stayed quiet for a moment, clearly not knowing what to say. Our bodies still swayed perfectly in rhythm to the ballroom music.

"What you did was so out of line, Kai-"

"I am not proud of what I did, but it is no way worse than what you did to me. You can try to spin it any way you like, but you're the one with the boyfriend. I did what I did to show you what you really are."

There it was, the rage spilling out of me in the form of cruel words. I'd never in my life imagined that I would be standing in the middle of Mystic Falls insulting Bonnie Bennett.

"And what am I?" she asked firmly, but I noticed the shakiness in her hand. Her eyes glistened over and I knew I'd hit a nerve.

"You're a coward." I said slowly. Carefully. As if the way I said it would change the meaning of the words.

Bonnie stared at me for a moment. She stopped swaying and released my hands, then nodded. I noticed she had blinked a tear out of her eye just before storming away from me and out of the high school gym. I followed right behind.

* * *

I found her sitting in a dark empty stairwell, quiet sniffs echoing through the hallway.

"Bonster?" I called out to her.

"Go away."

I sat down next to her, still keeping a safe distance, but I wanted to let her know that I was there. My rage faded completely and now I regretted saying what I did. Doing what I did.

"I'm sorry." I said quietly. She refused to meet my eyes.

"You don't understand."

"You're right. I don't understand why you're with him."

"Don't-"

"I don't understand why you kissed me."

She took in a deep breath, and finally looked up at me.

"Bon, just tell me. Tell me it meant nothing. Tell me to leave you alone. Tell me to go and I'll go."

She didn't say anything.

* * *

 **A/N: I guess I decided to continue. Big thanks to those who left a review, I was pleasantly surprised that someone was actually still reading so thank you for that. This was kind of a filler chapter for now, as I'm trying to think of where I want to take this story. Thanks for your support guys and for all the lovely words!**


	8. Chapter 8

_Tell me it meant nothing. Tell me to leave you alone. Tell me to go and I'll go._

The words rang through the empty hallway and her eyes didn't leave mine. She didn't tell me to leave. She didn't say that it meant nothing. But she didn't say I should stay either. No signs that she cared. Finally, she looked away.

"Okay... How about we go out for a quick walk? Some fresh air?" I suggested. "We don't even have to talk. Until you want to."

* * *

The streets of Mystic Falls were silent. Decorations from the festival, rides and stands were all left unattended, a few drunken youngsters stumbling around here and there. Most people were at the high school, I presumed. Bonnie and I walked around through the quiet night. No conversation, no words even. As promised. It was a lot more difficult for me to hold back saying anything than I thought it would be. I never realized how much of a need to talk I have. Constantly.

A few blocks into our walk, Bonnie took off her high-heels and carried them in her hand instead. When she stepped off of them and straightened her back to her natural height, I remembered she was so much shorter than me. I knew better than to underestimate her for that, though. I'd still bet on her to be the one to take me out in a fight. Such a tiny but powerful creature she was.

A small smile formed on my lips at the thought of that.

"What?" she questioned. Must have noticed I was looking at her.

"I thought we said no talking."

"Until I want to talk."

"Do you?"

"I want to know what you're smiling about."

I chuckled briefly.

"I was just thinking how I could beat your ass if we ever had a face-off. A little Bennett-Parker magic duel," I lied.

She remained uncharacteristically quiet where I expected a sarcastic retort, then she took a few steps forward, stopping in front of me to face me. She stood there for a few seconds and I stopped walking as well, watching her, wondering what she had on her mind.

"Is that a challenge?" she asked. She set her heels down on the ground then looked straight up at me.

I furrowed my eyebrows together, unsure of what she meant. Did she want to do this now? Was she threatening me? Was she about to kill me? Is this the last breath I would ever draw? No. Was she teasing? Flirting? I couldn't tell. But her eyes were fixated on me, and they were intimidating. In that moment, I was genuinely fearful of what would happen. A gust of wind suddenly blew outwards in a circle from her, raising the fallen leaves up in the air. I stumbled backwards for a moment, my eyes looking around the empty streets to see what she was doing. The Founder's decorations flew around above us, the trees almost dancing in the wind she'd created. I looked back at her and she was still looking at me, standing exactly as she was. Not a flinch.

I suddenly let out a chuckle. She was showing off her power for me. So I just had to join her. I calmed my startled body and stood right back in front of her. I focused on the lights around us. I began to shut them all out, the whole street one by one, only leaving one light shining right next to us. She smirked. I watched for what she would do next. In only a matter of seconds, all of the cars parked around the street lit up, the horns sounding loudly in the same pace with one another. They almost sounded like music. She was creative. And impressive.

I grinned and reached out for her hands. I took them in mine and channelled her wind through me, making it twice as strong. The whistling of the gusts matched perfectly with the honking of the cars. I looked at her and her smirk only grew larger. She held onto my hands tighter but I didn't feel any of my magic being fueled into her. I wondered what she was up to. I looked around but didn't notice her pulling any new tricks. My eyes travelled around the loud streets until I looked back at her again. Did I win? I was about to grin and boast, when she closed her eyes softly and lifted her face up to the sky. Slowly but surely, a cloud of raindrops came pouring down onto us. It wasn't just above us though. It started to pour down the streets, in every direction that I looked. I couldn't see the end of it.

I looked down at our hands, reminding myself that she wasn't channelling any of my magic to do this. She was just holding onto them for show. I had never seen anything like this. She was doing it all on her own, without so much as a chant, a spell or even a flinch. I must have been staring at her in utter shock, until the sound of a thunder shook me up and I let go of her hands, jumping back.

She didn't move an inch, but I laughed. I laughed like a maniac. She was insane.

"Jesus, Bonnie." I breathed out. "I get it. You win."

She opened her eyes again to look at me, and suddenly everything stopped. The rain was gone, the wind settled. The streets were as silent as death once more. Apart from the sound of my laughter, followed shortly by her own.

* * *

After our own personal parade, we headed towards the Salvatore mansion, drenched to the bone in our finest clothing. Bonnie had decided she wanted to stay there for the night and I didn't dare to probe her on why she wasn't staying with Jeremy. I just agreed to walk her there. We made our way down the street that the house was on, still chatting lightly about the magic we'd just shared. I was still amazed by her precision of channelling her power. She was so refined, so clear and so stable in her magic. I was jealous. I wanted to be like that. I was always tossing my magic around, wherever it would go, however much of it I could splurge out at once. It was messy and unstable, reeking of my own emotion in any given moment. Hers seemed so effortless.

"You need to be able to nail down the smallest spells. Make them go exactly the way you want them. Refine them so that the magic listens to you, and you can lead it, instead of it leading you," she explained. "Then, any bigger spell you try will be that much easier, once you've got a leash on your power."

I smiled. She sounded so passionate talking about magic. She loved it. I started to feel bad for being the reason she had to give it up for so long in the prison world.

"Sheila teach you that?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Yeah. Grams was always teaching me starter magic tricks, making me practice over and over again until I could do them all with no effort. I never understood why I couldn't move on to something bigger. For a while, I thought she didn't trust me, but instead she was just trying to make my power more manageable in the long run. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to handle half the spells I've had to do over the last few years. They'd have broken me, killed me even."

I listened to her intently, watching the gestures she made with her hands as she spoke, her fingers drawing invisible images through the space in front of her while we walked.

"Maybe you could teach me that sometime," I suggested.

"And have you made into a semi-competent witch? Not sure if I want to be responsible for that."

"Hey, I'm competent!"

She chuckled softly. "You're... powerful. You just need to know how to use it better."

I walked 'round in front of her and stopped her in her footsteps, like she'd done to me earlier that night. She looked up at me with interest.

"Teach me," I said. She studied my face for a moment, but I was serious. I wanted to know her. Everything about her. I wanted to know her magic. Inside and out.

"Why?" she questioned carefully.

"Because..." I started. "Maybe I want to be able to call upon a thunderstorm in the middle of a clear night without so much as moving a muscle."

She smiled. "It's not something you learn overnight."

"Good."

Bonnie rolled her eyes, a smile still evident on her lips. Then she strolled past me, whispered out a "come on" and made a turn towards Salvatore's driveway. I followed close behind her and into the house.

"I'm sure Damon won't mind if you borrow some of his clothes. You know where his room is."

I nodded, thanked and went upstairs. I followed the hallway to the room at the end and went inside, almost instantly rummaging through Damon's closet. I noticed he mostly only owned black clothes. Black shirts, tanks, pants, button-downs, suits, shoes. _However_ , I discovered a small drawer to the side where I found a yellow and blue button-up vacation shirt, and a pair of odd skinny cowboy pants with fringes down the side of them. I decided to wear just that.

"That _cannot_ be from Damon's room. You're joking."

Bonnie stared at me in shock as I made my way into the living room. She was already sitting on the couch, drying her hair with a towel. She'd put on a pair of jeans and a loose T-shirt. Her feet were covered with a pair of unmatched fluffy socks.

I sat down on the couch opposite of her. I could feel a grin spreading across my face. I was enjoying this outfit more than I should have been.

"I cannot take you seriously in that." she said.

"Do you ever take me seriously though?"

"I suppose not," Bonnie chuckled. "Listen, um... I'm sorry about what I did. When we were in Portland. I know it must have been confusing. I didn't mean to make it that way."

The atmosphere in the room changed instantly from lighthearted humorous chit chat to me beginning to sweat like the nervous wreck that I was. Why was she apologizing for kissing me? That's not the part I wanted an apology for.

"Um... what do you mean?" I asked shakily. I didn't want this to end up with her breaking my heart over some grad-student drunkard douche-bag junkie who didn't even care enough to be there for her through her toughest. My stomach was tight and I suddenly felt like I was gonna be sick all over the centuries old carpet in the living room. I didn't want to have this conversation. Not if it ended the way I thought it would.

"I mean, it was..."

 _Please don't say it, please don't say it, please don't-_

"A mistake."

I breathed out shakily. "You mean, us kissing? That was a mistake?"

She looked at me for a few seconds, not saying anything. She must have known how anxious I was feeling. Even without her powers, she could probably tell I was about ready to be swallowed up by the floor and never come back out.

"Kai, I'm just not in my right mind right now. I was trapped in that world for way too long. I lost all hope. You, out of everyone, should be able to understand that."

I nodded carefully, her words were barely reaching me at this point. All I could hear was the way she said it. _A mistake... a mistake, a mistake, a mistake,_ her voice repeating in my head over and over again.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's taking a while for me to get used to this world again. Longer than I thought it would. I need the comfort of what my life used to be like before all this. You know? Damon teasing me constantly. Girl nights with Elena and Caroline," she sighed. "Even my old boyfriend."

I blinked rapidly. I wasn't looking at her anymore.

"I just need it to be the way that it was for a little while. I need to be normal again."

I nodded slowly. "Okay... uh." I trailed off, trying to think of a way to soften this conversation, or get more out of her. "What have- what have you been struggling with? Like since you came back."

She paused for a second. She wasn't expecting questions.

"Uh... loud noises for a start. Loud places."

"Nightmares?"

"Yeah."

I'd had those myself, quite violent ones. Especially since the merge.

"Phones still scare me," she said with a sad humour in her voice. "You just never expect it to ring anymore."

A silence filled the room. I didn't know what to say anymore and my mood was gone out the window. She looked awkward, just sitting there.

"I - um.. I get lonely really easily," she said. I looked up at her for the first time in a while. I knew exactly what she meant by that.

"Me too. All the time?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "That's why I haven't gone home yet. I can't stand the idea of living alone. For the longest time, I was afraid that if I went to sleep alone, I'd wake up and I'd be back in that place."

I gulped. An old burden I still carried for her.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She shook her head. "It's alright."

I sat for a while. The silence was doing my head in and for the first time in a long time, I was left not knowing what to say. After a while, I got up.

"Okay, well... I'm gonna go then."

"No, don't." she called after me. "Stay."

I looked back at her. Her eyes pleaded me to stay with her, but her words pushed me so far away that I struggled to understand what she wanted. I never knew what she wanted. It was surprise after surprise with her. Just when I thought I'd figured her out, she'd prove me wrong.

"I thought you wanted me gone-"

She stood up and interrupted me. "I don't want you gone, Kai. I just-"

"Just what? What do you want, Bonnie?"

"I want you to... understand."

"Well, I don't!" I shouted out across the coffee table and she flinched. We looked at each other for the longest time. She didn't say anything and I'd had it. I turned around and walked away from her, but I felt her rushing after me to stop me. Her hand tugged on my arm and I stopped, but I didn't turn around. I couldn't face her.

"Kai?" she probed. I didn't move an inch. Her small hand fell slowly down my arm and my palm where she hooked her index finger around my pinky. She left it there for a few moments, not doing anything else. Then I felt her other palm pressing into my back lightly. The touch of her magic calmed me and she leaned her head against the backside of my shoulder. She stood there for a while, not letting me go, calming me more each passing minute. I felt her finger slowly tracing my palm. She'd literally had me wrapped around it. She then finally took my hand fully into her own, intertwining our fingers.

We stood there for a while. Perhaps it was a lot longer than what it felt. But I didn't want to let go of the moment and she didn't seem to want to either. Maybe we were enjoying the restfulness. The closeness of another person. Finally, I broke the silence.

"You do know I have a lot of feelings for you, Bonster."

I could feel her start to nod slowly against my back.

"I know," she mumbled.

It felt so real. I'd finally said those words to her and there was no taking it back. I couldn't pretend I meant something else by it anymore. I couldn't blame it on being overly friendly or too lonely. She knew now. But she knew anyway, didn't she?

"Me too." she added suddenly. It took me a while to connect the dots and understand what she had meant. I could feel the weight and the sadness being lifted off my chest. It felt like I could breathe again. I let all her emotions flow through her palm into me and I found them so similar to my own. So fragile, confused and scared, but hopeful and caring. Perhaps we were just two broken souls trying to find a way to connect to something. Trying to find someone to understand us.

I turned around slowly to face her. She let go of me and looked up into my eyes.

"You do?" I asked. She nodded slowly, I thought I saw her smile for a split second and then she let out a heavy breath.

"But I can't right now."

I understood this time. She was just as lost and confused in this world as I was. Hell, I was still trying to make sense of all the new feelings inside me. She was probably doing the same.

"Okay," I said. "What do you need?"

"Um..." she sniffed a bit, hugging her torso "I don't know, just..."

"A friend?" I asked. I knew she'd never suggest those words and I was surprised to hear them coming out of my own mouth, but I wanted to be with her. However she needed me to. "A partner in crime?" I added.

She smiled softly at me and nodded.

"I can do that," I said. Bonnie suddenly wrapped her hands around me and held me tightly, burying her head in my chest like it was the one thing she'd been waiting to do all night.

* * *

 **A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter, I hope whoever's reading this enjoys as well! Hopefully not too long for another update. I'm really happy writing these recently. Thank you guys!**


	9. Chapter 9

Being Bonnie's friend was a lot easier than I thought it would be. After the Founder's Day celebration in October, we had spent almost every day together. It was small short meet-ups at first. We would go for the occasional midnight stroll to the 24/7 corner store to satisfy late night cravings for food and company. There were times where she would message me at three in the morning after being woken up by a violent nightmare, asking me if I felt like going out to the park with her. I replied without fail every single time. In fact, her unexpected texts became the only reason I would constantly keep my phone ringer on.

Soon enough, she would begin to show up at my videostore. The first time I saw her there, around Halloween, she had been browsing the horror section of the store. I studied her for a while. She was wearing a sleek black button-up. Soft material - silk maybe, slightly loose on her shoulders and unbuttoned enough to show off the smooth skin of her chest. It was tucked into a pair of light high-waisted denims that reached just above her ankles. She had on a small moon-shaped silver necklace and white low-top sneakers. Her hair was curled, pulled back by a clutch with a few strands hanging loose around her focused eyes. I wondered for a moment if she had put any special effort into her looks because she knew she would see me. It was already quite late and she looked like she had only just picked her outfit. I couldn't imagine Bonnie Bennett dressing up for me, though, but the more I watched her the more I convinced myself that she did exactly that. The videostore was quiet that evening, so after a few minutes of studying her I decided to walk over to say hello.

"Insidious is a good choice, but if you're going for 2010 'horror masterpieces'," I started speaking when I saw the film she was holding, and made sure she noted my use of air quotes then handed her another DVD. "I'd suggest Let Me In."

"Mmh, murderous psycho children. Why am I not surprised?"

I smiled lightly at her remark. She kept both of the films in her hands and grabbed a copy of the 2010's Nightmare on Elm Street, adding it to the top of her pile.

"Three's the maximum I can take out, right?"

I paused for a moment. "You're intending on watching more than three horror movies in one night?"

"Is... that unreasonable?"

"I thought you've been having nightmares, is watching scary movies alone at night in a big house really the right way to combat that, Bennett?"

"Trust me, I'd love a nightmare about Freddie Krueger right about now."

"That bad, huh?"

She shrugged.

"I suppose I can bend the maximum order to five for a desperate sleepless friend in need of barely-two-star entertainment."

She immediately turned back to the shelf and grabbed Hatchet II and The Last Exorcism.

"Interesting choices."

"Stop judging me," she said.

"Tell me Bonster, does Mystic Fall not have its own videostore conveniently located 5 minutes away from the Salvatore mansion?"

"It does."

"So how come you came all the way out here?"

She paused.

"You have a better selection."

"Uh-huh," I retorted sarcastically.

"Fine. Perhaps I wasn't entirely counting on watching the films alone," she said.

"Cute," I replied. She rolled her eyes and smacked me with the pile of DVDs that she was holding.

"When do you close?" she asked. I loooked over at the clock on the wall behind my till, 10:30pm.

"Half an hour, technically but... you're the only person that came in since 9. I could just shut early."

"That's two rules I'm making you break tonight. Perhaps Elena's right, you _are_ a bad influence on me."

"Hey, you want me to watch this garbage with you or not?"

"Yes," she laughed.

"Then no insults!" I began walking towards the till, she followed in suit.

"It wasn't an insult-"

"The mention of Elena's name alone is an insult to me."

"Oh my God!" she shouted out through her laughter and I felt another smack at my shoulder from behind. "Now who's being insulting?!" she joked.

I'd checked out three of her DVDs and used my own membership to get her the other two. She distracted me immensely while I tried to close down the store and count the till money, so much so that I had eventually given up and decided to count it before opening the next day instead.

We spent the night in the Salvatore living room, cozied up under a pile of blankets and an even bigger pile of popcorn. By the start of the second film, she had settled herself onto my shoulder, then slowly moved down to my chest during the third one and by the end of the fourth film I'd gathered up enough courage to place my arm around her. During the last film, my courage meter went up by the slightest bit and I'd started to move my fingers lightly, drawing circles on her arm. I had spent about 20 minutes prior internally talking myself into doing it. I started out so subtly, I was wondering if she had even noticed. I slowly increased my radius, trailing my fingers around the material of her blouse and when she didn't complain I felt myself getting more confident. I'd trace my hand all the way up and down her arm, making my way up to her shoulder. I'd eventually moved my hand onto her head and began stroking her hair gently. I'd take the loose strands between my fingers and play with them, then move the tips of my fingers down the side of her neck and back to her shoulder. I had missed the entirety of the final film as my eyes had been glued onto her. I felt her getting so warm in my embrace, the more I let my fingers wander.

Once I noticed the ending titles pop up on the screen, I rested my hand finally on her waist, barely containing my fingers from exploring this area as well. I was still in genuine awe that she lay relaxed right there on my chest and didn't smack my hand away. It was a strange feeling to be allowed to touch someone.

"Can we just sleep here?" she spoke softly. The sun was starting to peek slowly in through the windows.

"Sure."

I put down the bowl with now only popcorn kernels down from my lap to the coffee table and I moved myself over to lay on the couch with her. Me on my back, and her small body on top of mine. Her head remained comfortable on my chest and the blankets covered our intertwined legs. When she'd gotten comfortable I noticed her eyes closing. I couldn't help myself anymore, and I let my hand move softly at her waist, my fingers slowly tracing her side. She fell asleep quickly afterwards and I was too scared to move an inch not to wake her.

I couldn't fall sleep, so I laid there for hours until I needed to get ready for work again.

Along with our occasional movie nights, we also started getting coffee at the Mystic Grill with Damon to talk about the 1903 prison world that his mother was trapped in and try to figure out a way to get her out. Bonnie spent endless meetings trying to convince him it might not be the best idea and he relied on me to back him up seeing as I was their only example of a supernatural prisoner released into the modern world. Eventually, she gave up and decided to work alongside us. We spent the better half of November convincing Alaric to convince Jo to convince my father to give up the ascendant for this prison world. I, of course, suggested a violent option instead, which Damon was entirely in favor of, but Bonnie swore she would give us up if we tried anything of the sort. This was enough to shut us both up and drop the idea.

Bonnie and I had started having more private meetings where we would research prison worlds & ascendants without Damon's pressure and yammering in the background. We soon came to find that each prison world had its own specific lock and the ascendant had to fit into it like a key. We had scoured several hundreds of history books, legends and grimoires in search of an image or mentions of the 1903 ascendant. Piece by piece, we'd managed to gather information about it and decided to work in secret to recreate the device in time for Christmas, where we had planned to gift it to Damon as a surprise, that is if we'd manage to get a working version of it in time.

When we got bored of our research, Bonnie and I would practice magic. We fooled around with small magic tricks in the local library, tossing and levitating books whilst freaking out old Hillary, the librarian, in the process. We'd also begun trying to light candles from afar. Turns out that playing with fire in a building more prone to burning down than a gas station, was not the smartest idea for a coven leader with uncontrolled magic. Lighting them from afar never caused any issues, but when Bonnie asked me to focus all my attention on the candle at the table right next to us, it burst into flames seconds later along with someone's study books. The fire flamed up and spread so quickly, we couldn't use magic to put it out without a lot of questions being asked. So we sat there and watched Hillary run over with a fire extinguisher.

For bigger spells, she would take me out on hikes to quiet and private places where no one would notice us. She taught me how to focus my magic and I felt more in control than ever. Fact is, I'd never had my own magic so I was never taught to use it properly. Each time I'd get my hands on it in the past, I knew I had to use it quickly in any way I knew how before it drained away. Now that it was there constantly, the trick was to learn how to live with it and not let it ooze out of me in whatever way I could.

There was so much more to magic than I'd ever imagined. For the most part, I felt like a little kid learning how to swim. Embarrassed even, for all the things she knew by heart, but I'd never even heard of. But Bonnie was kind and patient. She gave me a small leather notebook in which she wrote down notes for the things she taught me that day. She'd write down all the Latin incantations and draw out the hand gestures for each type of spell we went over.

I was amazed by the time and effort she had put into me so I felt like I had to repay her in some way. I started to bring her presents every time that we would meet up. From our conversations, I knew that nougat was her favorite type of chocolate and that she adored yellow flowers. She thought they were the happiest flowers of all, so I brought her sunflowers, yellow roses and tulips. I'd attach a small paper card on them and drew a different smiley face on it each time. She loved them. I also started making her CD's and car mixtapes with all my favorite new songs on them, but she told me that mixtapes weren't a thing anymore.

"What do you mean? As long as there's music, there should be mixtapes!" I complained.

"Well, we don't really burn CD's or mixtapes anymore. Most cars don't even have a tape player."

"How do you listen to music then?"

"Online. You have apps or you download them to your phone."

"What about when you're in the car?" I asked.

"You can use bluetooth to connect your phone to your car speakers."

"What's a blue tooth?"

After trying to explain this new technology to me, Bonnie eventually gave up and took me to her car to show me. She whipped out her phone, pressed a button on it and then put on a playlist. It started magically coming out of her car speakers instead of her phone. She hadn't even used a cable to connect it in any way.

"Wait so how does it work? Do you need to hold it in a specific spot?" I asked.

"No, you just need to be close to the car. As long as the phone's inside it will connect."

"That's insane."

She laughed at my fascination with new technology and let me choose the next song. I put on Baby Got Back and turned up the volume. I almost went crazy when I realized she didn't know what the song was, but I continued to rap it word for word as she watched me. Damon opened the front door of the house shortly after, looked towards us for a few seconds and then went back inside. We continued to sit in the car in front of the Salvatore mansion for the next few hours, listening to music. I would play her my favorite 80s hits and she would introduce me to new talent. I wrote down all the artists that she told me she liked into my notebook so that I could listen to all their songs when I got home. I decided I would make her playlists instead of mixtapes. She said that people didn't usually do that because there were so many playlists available online, but I said I would make them anyway. So she let me log into her Spotify account and I texted her each time I'd finished adding a new playlist on for her. She said she listened to them when she was struggling to sleep. I figured as much considering her "thank you for the new playlist" texts always arrived to my phone at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Three weeks into November, I'd gotten word from Damon that somewhere along the way, Jeremy had decided yet again that he could not stay in Mystic Falls. Apparently, this time around Bonnie said she wouldn't wait for him anymore. That was that.

Thanksgiving came around and Bonnie invited me to join her, Damon, Elena, Stefan and Caroline for Thanksgiving dinner. I wasn't very keen on the idea but she made her case that it would be a perfect opportunity for the rest of her friends, besides Damon, to get to know me better. And as per her suggestion, I needed to socialize more anyway, lest I get depressed.

Things didn't quite go as she imagined. It wasn't a bad evening but it wasn't particularly great either.

The beginning of the day was probably the best part. It was just Bonnie, Damon and I cooking turkey dinner in the Salvatore kitchen. We had spent hours preparing the food and as tiring as it was, it was also some of the best fun I'd had in a while. We had turned the radio to 90s hits, set out our ingredients and brought out a bottle of bourbon for drinking games. The rules were simple, we were to take a sip every time Damon used the wrong measurement for a recipe, every time Damon burned his hand and every time Damon cursed. We began running out of bourbon quicker than anticipated, so we decided to stop the game. Otherwise, we would have likely ruined the dinner before it even started.

Stefan arrived first, earlier than the agreed time. This was the first time I'd gotten a chance to meet him. Stefan was nice, easy to get along with and much less judgemental than I expected him to be. Bonnie had told me stories about Stefan, and how he always seemed to have the highest moral ground out of anyone she knew, but he had his own share of bad decisions, so his judgements towards others faded over time.

Stefan helped us finish up the dinner and set up the dining table. Him and I had been getting along well and I was finally feeling positive about the dinner. He seemed to genuinely care about Bonnie and was glad to see her happy. He took interest in our magic and research and offered us a space to practice if we ever needed it. Apparently he'd had a big empty repair garage a few towns over that he wasn't using anymore.

Damon took the opportunity to bring his little brother up to speed with the mystery of Lilly Salvatore. Stefan was grateful for all our hard work and research but he was shocked to learn that his angelic mother had been a vampiric ripper. He wanted to stay out of our mission of bringing her back.

Elena and Caroline arrived at exactly 6pm and the mood of the gathering changed almost instantly. At least for me it did. They came in and Caroline hugged Stefan, then walked over to Bonnie who was standing right next to me. She pulled her in for a hug but kept her judgy eyes on me the whole while.

"Oh. Kai's here." she said, pulling away from the hug.

"Lovely to see you, too, Caroline."

It's needless to say that throughout the dinner party, Caroline had smacked more than a few jabs at me. Elena wasn't too pleased to see me there either but she directed her stabs at Bonnie, which I found even more upsetting. For some reason they had both acted as if Bonnie forgiving me was the worst thing she had ever done in her life. I found this highly ridiculous coming from two girls with the most questionable moral tastes in the room.

If they had directed their hate towards me, I could have handled the evening without any issues. Heck, I was more than used to being the object of loathing and disgust in the room. But what agitated me was the fact that they somehow made it their goal to make Bonnie feel bad about herself. And then it hit me. That was how it always was. Elena and Caroline were always the ones that got whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They made questionable choices and serious mistakes but because it was _them,_ it didn't matter. Bonnie always had to do what was expected of her, and it didn't matter if she was happy or not. It seemed Elena and Caroline didn't want to see her happy and much less so if I had anything to do with it.

"So, I heard Jeremy moved away again. What happened?" Caroline nosed around, taking a sip out of her champagne glass. Bonnie cleared her throat. I could feel how awkward she was feeling. She sat next to me at the table, with Damon and Elena opposite us. Stefan was at the head of the table, next to me and Damon, while Caroline sat at the opposite end next to Elena and Bonnie.

"Um... Nothing really. He just didn't feel like there was anything in Mystic Falls for him," Bonnie replied. I felt disgust burning in my stomach at that statement. He had Bonnie and she wasn't enough for him.

"Oh, you know Jer. He'll be back sooner than you know it and begging for Bonnie back. I always thought you were meant to be," Elena added, looking directly at me when she finished her sentence. I knew she wanted me as far away from Bonnie as possible.

"Wait, you didn't tell me they _broke up,_ " Caroline shouted. I looked towards Damon who had been stuffing his mouth with cranberry sauce and rolling his eyes at the sound of Caroline's voice.

"We did," Bonnie interrupted them, "He's trying to find a purpose for himself and I'm happy for him but we won't be getting back together."

"Come on, Bonnie. We all know that's not true," Caroline laughed and Elena joined her.

"It is-" Bonnie tried to speak but got interrupted. I felt my blood boiling at how they were treating her.

"Yeah, right, you two are like an old married couple already, there's no one else either of you could stand to be with," Elena said.

"It's interesting how you think you know Bonnie's relationships more than herself." I couldn't stay quiet any longer, so I interrupted Caroline and Elena's little mock party. Silence came over the table as the two of them stared at me in shock. I could feel that Stefan and Damon agreed with me judging by the way they both watched Elena and Caroline. Bonnie tensed up next to me.

"Excuse me?" Elena replied finally.

"You don't know anything about Bonnie and Jeremy's relationship," Caroline added.

"No, but I know enough about Bonnie to know that she is more than capable of making her own decisions."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Caroline retorted.

"Okaaaay, how about we take this back a notch, hmm?" Damon interrupted loudly before anyone else could add anything. "Who's ready for dessert?" he grinned and everyone quieted down. "Kai? Will you give me a hand?" he asked.

A loud sigh escaped my mouth as I got up and followed him back into the kitchen. I could hear Stefan begin to ease the tension between the girls with some small talk. I didn't hear Bonnie joining the conversation though.

"I know you're protective over Bonnie, but you have to remember that those are her friends, Kai." Damon said as he took several cakes out of the fridge.

"You call that friends? They were grilling her and not letting her say what she wanted to say."

"They haven't seen her in a long time."

"Stefan hasn't either but he was a heck of a lot nicer to her."

"Well, girls are different, I don't know." Damon started to cut the cakes up and place the pieces onto large plates. "They have their own way of communicating with each other. Passive aggressiveness instead of saying what they actually think."

"That's dumb."

" _Point is_ : it's not your place to jump in and make a scene."

"Yeah but, I can't just-"

"If you really believe that Bonnie can make her own decisions and speak for herself, then _let her_."

I stopped speaking and thought about what he'd said. He wasn't wrong.

"I know Bonnie doesn't need my help. But I want to be there for her, she deserves that." I said.

"Of course she does. But you don't need to fight her battles for her. That doesn't help anyone, and least of all her." I listened as he spoke, letting his words sink in. "So go, sit next to her, be there for her, send her magic witchy-woo signals or whatever you need to do, but let her speak her mind."

I nodded. Damon handed me a plate with cake and took one himself and we went back into the dining room.

For the rest of the evening, I let Caroline and Elena's jabs pass me by and I made sure to stay next to Bonnie the whole time. I chatted lightly with Stefan and Damon, mostly listening to Stefan's stories from the new town he'd moved to and new people he had met. I was taken aback slightly when I felt Bonnie's hand wrapping gently around mine underneath the table. She intertwined her fingers with mine, but her eyes were focused on Elena as she spoke to her. Caroline noticed our hands out of the corner of her eye and sent me a nasty look. I felt a satisfied smile creeping up on my face, but I turned back quickly after, continuing my conversation with the Salvatore brothers.

* * *

 **A/N: Ahh, okay this chapter got quite long. I wanted to show a bit of how Kai and Bonnie would be getting along as friends, as time passed by and they both slowly get used to the world again. I like the thought that they would be there for each other whenever necessary and kind of be each other's safe space. I'm toying with the idea of a Christmas chapter, cuz I've got a wonderful idea for it, but I'm not sure if I want to add another chapter before that.**

 **So anyway, it would help me if you left a review and told me what you think of the story so far!**

 **Thank you x**


	10. Chapter 10

**Following chapter is told from Bonnie's perspective.**

* * *

3:42 AM.

The red clock stared at me from the dresser in my room at the Salvatore mansion. I'd done it again.

My nightmares were getting old fast. There was only so much I could take of the memories of the lonely days in the prison world. I never flashed back to the days when I was there with Damon. Not even when I was scared for my life, trapped with the sociopathic version of Kai, because at least there was someone there. No, my nightmares knew how to dig a hole much deeper than that. They knew to hit where it hurt the most.

I never thought of myself as a socially reliable person. I only ever had two friends growing up, Elena and Caroline, and I wasn't all too reliant on family either. So the idea that being alone somehow turned out to be my biggest fear made me question myself. I don't, however, find it surprising in the slightest. Prison worlds seem to have a way of instilling deep traumas.

Tonight it was an empty church in Mystic Falls. An interesting choice, certainly a first in my dreams. This nightmare wasn't really that type of nightmare you'd usually experience with monsters sneaking around, trying to get to you, or the room closing in on you. Instead, it was eerily realistic. It didn't feel like time passed by at all, it didn't feel blurry or hazy. I knew I was there, in that big room with no doors. Alone.

I walked towards the wall and lay my hand on top slowly. Suddenly, several screams echoed through the empty church around me. One of them, I recognized as my own.

"No... What did I do?" A voice whispered right next to me. It was blurry at first, but didn't take me too long to recognize. It was Kai's voice, it sounded like he was in shock. And pain. I turned around quickly but there was no one there. The room was empty.

"Kai?" I stepped forward towards the altar. No one answered. I called out for him a few more times, then began shouting for other people too. There was no answer and I could feel the panic settling in my bones. It got worse and worse until I felt like I could not breathe any longer.

That was when I shot up in bed. It was almost four in the morning. I grabbed my phone and flicked on the screen to check if I had any notifications from the real world, or reception even. This was a typical routine that I'd grown accustomed to over the past few months for each time I woke up from a nightmare. Reason was, I woke up with a dying fear inside me that I was alone in the world again, so seeing real notifications on my phone relieved my stress immediately. Tonight, there was a single text message from Kai lighting up my screen: _Uploaded a new playlist for you, titled Little Miss Magic x,_ received at 11:52 pm.

I smiled lightly to myself, typed out a brief thank you message as I got out of bed and tapped on my Spotify app. I walked out of my room and down the hallway towards Damon's. I opened the door lightly, hoping not to wake him up and tapped my feet quietly on the floor until I made my way over to his bed. I used to knock at first, but overtime I didn't want to bother waking him. This was the second part of my routine.

I got into the bed quietly and snuggled up under the sheets. I found the playlist titled Little Miss Magic and opened it, letting my finger scroll slowly through the songs as I examined the titles and artists. I knew some of them, but some were new and intriguing.

Damon moved around behind me and I felt his arm wrapping around my waist lazily.

"I didn't mean to wake you," I said quietly.

"It was the smell," he whispered, to which I kicked him lightly with the back of my heel. He laughed hoarsely in return.

"I'm kidding," he said, then pulled himself closer to me and peered over my shoulder, "Is that a new playlist from loverboy?"

"Yeah," I replied and tapped on the first song, letting it play quietly.

"He got really fired up last night at the dinner," Damon said.

"Yeah... What did you tell him?"

"I just said to let you deal with your own demons."

"And by demons, you mean your girlfriend?"

He snorted in return. At this point, I'd turned around to lay on his shoulder as we talked.

"I'll admit, I didn't agree with Elena's yapping but she just needs time to come around. He _did_ torture her. As for Caroline, well... you know she's just Elena's sheep."

"I never thought out of my entire group of friends, you'd actually _ever_ be my favorite."

"Wait, wasn't I always?"

I laughed a little and wrapped my hand around him as I settled into a comfortable position. A song played on in the background and we lay there quiet for a while, listening to it. It was calm and emotional, almost hypnotizing. A cover of an old The Police song, I think. I quite enjoyed Kai's taste in music.

"Jesus, I never thought Kai would be such a sap," Damon said finally.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you listening to the same song I'm listening to?"

"Uhh..."

"Come on, even you can't be that blind."

"I'm _aware_ that he has a bit of a thing for me."

"A bit?"

"Shut up, Damon."

"My question is, how do _you_ feel?"

I sighed. I felt a lot in the last few months, and hanging out with Kai only confused me further. I didn't _want_ to have feelings for him. But at the same time, the more I got to know him, the more I actually liked him. He almost felt... comfortable.

"I don't know," I replied.

Damon flicked my head.

"Ouch?!"

"I need details, Bon Bon."

"Fine, Jesus..." I started to speak, rubbing my forehead. "He's been really nice to me and I've been enjoying his company."

"...That's it? That's all I get?"

"Damon..." I whined, "Can we just listen to the damn playlist?"

"Bonnie."

"What?"

"The world's not gonna cave in if you actually admit someone makes you happy."

I took a deep breath. He had a point, but thinking about my feelings for Kai was one of the more difficult things I'd had to deal with.

"Elena and Caroline don't seem to think so."

"They will come around if they see you're happy. And I think Kai could use some forgiveness in his life. Can't think of a better person than you."

"Ah, because I'm _so_ forgiving?"

"You are the least forgiving person in the world, Bennett, I know from experience," he laughed. "But I guess I'm just saying I know what it's like to be in Kai's position. I could have used a Bonnie get outta jail free card back in the day."

"I'm getting there."

I settled into Damon and let the songs on the playlist pass us by as I dozed off to sleep.

* * *

I spent most of Black Friday asleep in Damon's bed. The sound of my phone ringtone buzzed me out of my sleep. I rubbed my face and reached over to pick it up.

"Hello?" I mumbled out, my voice coming out still hoarse and dreamy.

"It's 3pm, what are you doing asleep? I've been sending you messages all morning, you're missing Black Friday!" Kai's irrationally irritated voice shouted over the speaker.

"I'm not much of a Black Friday person." I said.

"Well, I am! So get up, I'm on my way to pick you up. Be ready in five minutes!"

Kai hung up the phone before I could even muster a complaint in return. The realization struck me instantly that he would be here soon so I needed to make myself presentable. I couldn't stand the thought of Kai seeing me after a hungover sleepless night, with no make-up and wearing my old pajamas. Nah, that was not gonna fly.

I rushed into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. After brushing my teeth as quickly as I could, I reached for my make-up bag. For a second I stood motionless and stared at myself in the mirror. Was I really putting on make-up for him? For God's sake, I wasn't even that smitten over Jeremy when we first dated in high school. Not to say that Kai and I were dating, because we were _not_.

So then... You don't _need_ the make-up, do you, Bonnie?

Ah, screw it.

I put on a light layer of foundation and some mascara. That's not so bad, right? That doesn't prove anything. We're going out into town anyway, so it's not like I'm doing it for him exclusively. Or for him at all, I mean.

 _Ding-dong!_

The sound of the bell threw me out of my trance, and I rushed back into the bedroom, where I picked up my pair of jeans and slid into them without fail. I pulled out one of Damon's black and white striped button-ups from his closet, pulled it over my head and tucked it quickly into my jeans. I put on my shoes, grabbed my hair clipper and ran downstairs, pulling my hair to the back of my head as I neared the front door. I clipped my hair and opened the door.

Kai stood there and he smiled when he saw me.

"You look good," he said. _Thank God._ I mean-

"Thank you," I replied. "Ready to go?"

* * *

After a tiring two hours of shopping with Kai, we decided to go for a stroll in the park on our way to the library, just outside of Mystic Falls. It was a beautiful, quiet place with stoned pathways to the side of a small lake, a few people sat on benches alongside the paths. Kai was being uncharacteristically silent during our walk.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked him. He kept quiet for a moment, playing with the ring on his little finger as he walked next to me.

"You held my hand yesterday." he said finally.

"I did."

"Was it because you wanted to or because..." He stopped walking. "You wanted to piss off Caroline?"

I stood still for a moment, thinking the question over. I looked down at his nervous fingers that played shakily against his hip. He looked straight at me, studying my face. My eyes. After a few moments, my hand must have subconsciously found its way around his own and I knew the answer.

"Both," I replied.

Kai chuckled, squeezing my hand lightly as he intertwined our fingers, "Good. I like evil Bonnie."

After this, we continued our walk through the park, the tension now lifted. We chatted lightly about the day's events but I couldn't help being more than highly aware of the fact that we were holding hands the entire time. It felt strange at first. I was nervous, almost scared. Not of him, but of the people that we passed by. I wondered what they thought of us, if they hated him for the things he'd done, or if they hated me for trying to forgive him. I knew my fear was irrational and that likely no one even noticed us and those that did must have thought nothing more of us than a random young couple. _Couple..._ Is that what we were? No, I wouldn't say so. Not yet anyway. But would we be?

As we walked out of the park and down the street, I decided to push those thoughts away. I didn't need to think about that. I could just enjoy the moment where I didn't have to give any excuses or reasons as to why I was even socializing with Kai Parker. In that moment, we were normal. Just two people enjoying their time together, minding their own business. It didn't matter if we were friends or enemies, or a couple for that matter.

We finally reached the library, where we had decided to settle for the rest of the day and dig into our prison world research. We'd made progress with assembling an ascendant that should have worked for the 1903 world, but we still had to find a way to make it correspond to the incantations. As we walked into the library and made our way to our usual desk, Kai let go of my hand. I almost felt disappointed, but I knew we couldn't keep holding hands the whole while. Realistically.

I dragged my chair over to the corner of the table to sit close to him. Closer than I usually did. I was pretty sure he noticed this when he subtly moved his chair closer to mine as well. He took out the ascendant we were working on and sat it on top of our research books. When I leaned in to read the incantations from the book, I noticed that our arms and shoulders were touching and I could feel his breath on my cheek while he watched me recite the latin words. I felt so nervous but I tried to shift all of my focus onto the spell. I repeated it several times, but nothing happened. The ascendant wasn't responding in any way.

"This isn't working. We must have done something wrong," I breathed out in frustration. I was getting angry at myself because I wanted to make this ascendant function in time for Christmas, but at the rate we were going, that wouldn't happen. Kai must have felt my agitation, so he grabbed the ascendant.

"Calm down, moody-pants. Lemme try."

He took my hand, palm up, and placed the ascendant gently on top. He then held his own palm under mine and when he started to recite the words, I felt a surge of magic vibrating from his palm through mine and into the ascendant. When he finished the incantation we'd found, a part of the ascendant clicked open. The relief I'd felt in that moment made me laugh and he joined me.

I turned my head to look at him as our chuckles died down and only then did I realize how close we were. Our faces were merely inches away and I saw his eyes dipping down to my lips. His smile faded and he leaned down further to kiss me, but I jerked out of surprise and turned my head away. I instantly regretted doing this when I heard him awkwardly clearing his throat.

"Um.. So I'm assuming that there's more parts to the incantation then..." he began to speak, likely to detract from what had just happened. I looked back up at him and his face gave away all of his emotions as he tried to speak through it. This was the biggest difference between the Kai I had met in the prison world and the Kai I knew now. I used to not be able to read any of the thoughts he might have been having. However, in this moment everything was clear as day - his hurt, his disappointment, even his lust. Perhaps it was because he never had to deal with these emotions before that he was so bad at hiding them now.

His words felt distorted in my ears as he talked. What came over me next, I couldn't tell. But whatever it was, I ended up leaning back towards him and planting a soft kiss on his cheek. He'd immediately stopped speaking. My lips rested right next to his skin and I dwelled on whether or not I should have moved away. Before I got the chance to, he moved his head slowly towards me so that his lips were right in front of mine now. He didn't do anything though. I knew that he wouldn't, not after I'd just rejected him. But he knew to taunt me with his mouth and his breath so close to my own.

I tried to breathe in through my nose and calm down my racing heartbeat. But it only got worse, the longer I stayed still. I tried to talk myself into moving away, but I couldn't do it. I didn't want to. I loved the feeling of his forehead resting against mine. His breath mixing with my own. His closeness. For some reason, I was craving it.

Without giving myself too much time to think about it, I finally allowed my lips to catch his gently. It felt as though he was surprised at first. Maybe even careful. But it didn't take long for him to respond, and he kissed me with so much emotion bleeding off of his skin that I didn't know how to handle it. His hand found its way to the back of my neck and he pulled me even closer into him. I'd forgotten about everyone and everything else in that moment. My worries of what my friends would think of this were so far out out of my mind and all that mattered in that moment was him. His lips, his smell, his touch. It was intoxicating, I knew that. I hadn't had such strong feelings about anyone before. I felt like I _needed_ him.

So I kissed him back with all of my own emotions too. I wanted to tell him everything without having to speak. He must have felt it because I noticed him taking a sharp breath and chuckling nervously next to my lips once he realized that I wanted this as much as him. He regained his focus soon after and kissed me again. I could feel the grin on his lips that he was trying so hard to control.

I planted a few last kisses onto his mouth before I decided to stop. I rested my head against his forehead again for a few moments while I gave myself the chance to catch my breath. I heard him doing the same and we rested against each other for a few moments. Then he pressed a kiss into my right cheek, like he was paying me back for mine. I let out a quiet laugh and moved away finally.

"So, we need to find the other part of the incantation to get this ascendant to open," I said.

We continued our research late into the night, and Kai was likely in the best mood I'd ever seen him in. In fairness, I'd finally felt really comfortable in the new world as well. We laughed, we had fun. We made progress on the incantation. And I took his hand again as we left the building.

* * *

I never thought I'd be yearning to see Kai Parker, but there I was, stalking him at his own workplace. We hadn't seen each other in almost a week because he had decided to travel to Portland and try to find out more information about the ascendant from Jo, or any of his other coven members. He had still sent me texts throughout the week, but I couldn't stop thinking about our kiss. Frankly, I was disgusted with myself.

I was even more infuriated with myself for the fact that I'd decided to head down to his videostore the second I knew he was back in town. When I walked in, I saw him behind the counter. He was presumably talking to a customer. A reasonably attractive blonde-headed girl. I moved around the isles and pretended to look through the DVDs on the shelves, but my eyes were glued to him and this girl. She didn't seem like a customer. She didn't have any DVDs in her hands, and she didn't look like she had an intention of getting any.

I heard her chuckle and then Kai took her hand over the counter. I felt my breathing getting difficult as he held her palm and drew circles on it with his finger. My heart began to race and I felt myself getting nauseous. I began to seriously struggle for breath. The DVD box I was gripping on suddenly made a crackling sound and I realized I'd broken it. I looked down and put it back on the shelf.

When I looked back up to the till, the girl had left and Kai was looking right at me. He smiled and waved. I walked over to the counter, slowly trying to calm myself down. I couldn't let him see I was upset over this. We weren't exclusive, were we? We never even talked about what happened. We never said we were dating. He was free to do what he wanted to do, as was I.

"Hey, Bonster. How did Mystic Falls get on without me?" he asked cheerily.

"Who was that?"

Nice one, Bonnie. Very smooth. Subtle.

Kai paused for a second. He was confused by my question at first and a few seconds later I knew he had noticed how upset I was. He leaned down on the counter and smirked deviously before speaking.

"So this is what jealousy looks like on Bonnie Bennett. I'm honoured," he replied. I wanted to slap the grin off of his face. I didn't know what to say without making it sound like I was jealous even more than he already knew. So I didn't say anything. His grin faded when he realized I was serious.

"Sorry, Bonnie. Um, that was Hannah, she's mine and Jo's cousin. She lives a few towns over, needed help with a quick locator spell."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Word got around about my merge and apparently not everyone in the coven hates me. They still need a leader."

I nodded slowly. The jealousy inside me faded away slowly, but I still felt sick. Sick that I'd even felt jealous in the first place. Kai reached out for my hand across the counter and took it into his carefully.

"You think I'd even look at anyone else with Bonnie freaking Bennett in front of me?"

I looked up at him and as soon as I saw his eyes, I knew he was genuine about what he'd said. I looked away again, took in a deep breath and pulled my hand away from his. "Uh, I just came over to ask if you've made any progress on the ascendant. It really needs to work."

"Yeah, I've got the notes in my car. We can head to the library and have a look at it together, I'm off in 15 minutes," he said.

He let me wait from him in the office space behind the counter, until his friend Brad showed up for the next shift. I hoped I would cool off by the time we got to the library because I hated being in a mood for something that didn't even happen. I was mainly angry at myself for allowing my emotions to get that high, and especially for letting Kai know about it.

Thankfully, Kai decided not to milk it and he instead told me all about his trip on our drive to the library. He mentioned how he avoided his father like the plague and managed to not have to face him all the while that he was there. He said he had a few good conversations with Jo and he was hopeful that she might forgive him at some point. He said he wouldn't stop trying with her, because she meant a lot to him. She warned him to avoid Liv, though. Liv was very much on their father's side and Jo was afraid that if she got to see Kai again, she would murder him without hesitation or regard for the coven.

We'd made it to the library and we got comfortable at our desk as Kai pulled out his notes. We had to piece together a few different bits of information until we could figure out the proper incantation for both getting in and out of the prison world.

"I missed this," Kai said.

"What?"

"Late nights at the library. Just the two of us," he smiled. I looked up at him and gave a quick smile back.

"Me too," I leaned back in my chair, deciding to take a break from staring at the words in front of us. "So what _is_ the situation with your coven then?"

"Well... My father and Liv are obviously not overly pleased with me. I doubt they'll ever be. But a few of my distant relatives reached out while I was in Portland and came to talk to me. I must have left a good impression."

"So... do they... follow you now or something? How does being a coven leader work?"

"No, not really. I think it's gonna take some time for the coven to actually trust me after the effort my father put into making sure they don't. But I think they might at least be considering the idea. Some of them, anyway. They might ask me for help and advice with their magic practice, but... I don't know how to lead them yet."

"You'll figure it out," I smiled towards him. I grabbed the latin dictionary that we weren't using anymore and got up to put it back on the shelf we'd taken it from. I walked away from the table and in between two shelves that made up a long corridor of books. At the end I took a turn to the left into another long corridor of shelves and walked towards the spot I always found the book in. I found the gap where it was waiting to be put and I slowly wedged it back inside. When I turned around, Kai was standing right behind me.

"Jesus Christ!" I spoke in a hushed voice.

"Did I scare you?" he asked. He'd taken a step closer and I was trapped between him and the shelf. My breathing intensified at the feeling of his body aligned with mine. He leaned his arms on the shelf at each side of me and placed his forehead gently on mine.

"A little," I whispered, gulping down my nerves as I did.

"I don't want to scare you," he said quietly into my lips right before he kissed me. I never even got a chance to reply, but I wasn't going to complain. I kissed him back for a good while. My thoughts raced and my body heated up so quickly at his closeness. I had never been kissed like that before. I'd never felt that much passion, appreciation, need and respect in one single kiss.

My hand reached up to his chest as we made out like a bunch of horny students at the back of the library and I noticed that he'd kept his hands steadily on the shelves behind me. I reached up to one of them and took it down to my waist. He parted his lips from mine when I placed his palm at my side and he looked down at me, slightly confused.

"Is that okay?" he asked.

I furrowed my eyebrows. I didn't understand why he would ask that.

"Yeah," I breathed out. "Of course."

He nodded slowly and leaned back in to kiss me again. His hand rested against my waist since I'd left it there and he seemed very careful not to move it around too much. After a while he came up for air and chuckled briefly.

"I really didn't mean to scare you. I just missed you," he said.

"It's okay," I laughed. "Are you trying to live out your wild teenage fantasies with me here?"

"You caught me. I'm just making up for lost time. I never got to go to high school, so making out with hot girls at the back of the library was pretty much impossible."

"You didn't go to high school?" I asked, looking up into his eyes. He shook his head slowly.

"Home-schooled."

"Right," I breathed out. I wasn't surprised. But the more I learned about him, the more feelings I felt emerging inside me. He smiled for a moment and placed one last soft kiss on my lips.

"Come on, it's getting late. I'll take you home," he said.

"Okay," I nodded and followed him out of the bookshelf maze. We gathered our things and he drove me back to the Salvatore mansion. After my shower, I got into bed and took my phone out to find a text from Kai. He was asking me what other odd locations teenagers usually made out in. I named a few and he said he wanted to try them all out. I chuckled to myself and laid back onto my pillow. I guess it wasn't the worst idea.

* * *

 **A/N: Yay, new update! Hope you guys like this chapter, I personally adore it. I loooove what their relationship is right now. Also, my girlfriend challenged me to write it in Bonnie's point of view, so I thought I'd give it a whack. Hopefully it wasn't too bad.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Warning for Mature (M) content.  
** **Following chapter is told from Kai's perspective.**

* * *

The last few weeks leading up to Christmas had to have been the nicest days I'd had in my life. I spent most of my time at the Salvatore mansion with Bonnie and Damon. They made it their mission to catch me up to speed with all the best Christmas movies that came out during my imprisonment. I'd taken a bitter liking towards Grinch and requested to see that film several times over.

Things didn't progress much between me and Bonnie since our make-out in the library. I was craving to kiss her more after that encounter, but for some reason it felt natural just being around her. It was pleasant. It wasn't awkward or intense in any way and I enjoyed where our relationship was at. Well, I couldn't really call it a relationship, because we hadn't spoken about anything yet. We hadn't yet decided what we were. But there was definitely something different in the way that we acted around each other. Something different in the way she touched me. For starters, she touched me considerably more often than before. There were times when she would subtly place her hand on my forearm while she was talking to me. When she was sitting next to me, she'd have a habit of resting her hand on my leg. If I made her laugh, she would always reach out and grab my shoulder or arm.

These interactions made me feel safe. I suppose I could finally say with certainty that Bonnie Bennett liked my company. Even thinking about that sent chills through my body. I was beyond myself. I didn't, however, return her touches yet. I just couldn't bring myself to do it, not really. Of course, I would occasionally touch her cheek or hold her hand, but beyond that... I was scared. I didn't really know how to do it. Or if and when it was appropriate. And I didn't want to risk anything with her. Not when she was so happy to be next to me.

A few days before Christmas, Damon, Bonnie and I were sat in the living room at the boarding house watching The Polar Express when Elena waltzed in, annoyingly perky as always.

"Pack your bags, kids! Caroline and I booked a skiing lodge up north for Christmas, we leave tomorrow!" she exclaimed. Both Damon and Bonnie turned to look back at her un-enthusiastically so I joined them.

"Oh, Kai. Didn't see you there. How are you doing?" she continued.

"I'm all the better for seeing you," I grinned back at her and she flashed a forced smile.

"Uhh, Elena, we kind of have something planned out here, I told you," Damon said.

"Yeah, we can't really go up to some ski lodge," Bonnie agreed.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Well..." Damon started. He huffed his cheeks and didn't seem to know what to say.

"We just..." Bonnie continued his thoughts. "We've planned a small party here, with the three of us. You guys are welcome to join, though."

"What? No. You guys can have your celebration up at the lodge. Kai is..." she paused, forcing another smile, "..welcome to come along."

"We can't actually," Bonnie said.

"Why not? A ski trip sounds fun to me," I said. I was failing to see why Bonnie and Damon were so heavily against the idea. Perhaps they had a bad skiing past I wasn't aware of. Or maybe just a bad vacation experience with Elena. That wouldn't be so surprising.

"Thank you, Kai!" Elena grinned towards me. "Why are you two so against this?"

Damon let out a big sigh. He looked at Bonnie and she stared back. Like they were trying to come up with what to say.

"Listen, Elena. How about... you guys head up tomorrow and the three of us will join you after Christmas Eve? There's just something we have to be here for before we can go anywhere. Let's say we're uhh... waiting on a package delivery." he looked back at Bonnie and she nodded in agreement with his suggestion. Elena quirked her eyebrow up and looked towards me. I shrugged. I seriously had no idea what was going on.

* * *

Christmas Eve had come around quicker than I could have imagined and for some reason I felt really excited about it. I hadn't had a Christmas celebration in forever and all the ones I could remember weren't exactly pleasant memories. But spending it with just Damon and Bonnie around a cozy fire and big Christmas tree sounded like a dream come true. Of course, we had agreed to head up to some mountain lodge the day after to spend it with Elena's group of friends which wasn't exactly up my alley, but I thought I could get through it as long as Bonnie and Damon were there with me. Stefan, Matt and Jeremy were apparently up at the lodge too. So that was going to be interesting, if nothing else.

I packed up my gift for Bonnie and headed to the Salvatore mansion in the late afternoon. When I arrived Damon had let me inside and the first thing I did was walk over to the Christmas tree to drop off my present. When I looked down, there were only a few presents tucked underneath the tree. I saw a small package with a card that read "Damon" and I knew that must have been the ascendant that Bonnie and I were gifting to him. There was another tiny present next to it for Bonnie, presumably from Damon. And the last one was a ball shaped one that had my name on it. I was almost surprised to see it. I didn't even think of the fact that I might receive something as well. My curiosity instantly peeked up and I wondered what it could have been.

"Oh. Hey stranger," Bonnie stumbled into the room. She was wearing a Christmas onesie and seemed a little bit distracted. "Didn't know you were here already. Is that for me?" she pointed at the gift I was holding.

"It is so," I smiled and placed the gift under the tree.

"Well, now I'm excited," she said as she approached me. She stood close to me for a moment and smiled up at me, then grabbed my hand softly and dragged me out of the living room. "Come on, dinner's almost ready."

"Did Damon cook?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Oh God," I whined quietly.

"Hey!" I heard Damon shout from the kitchen, just before we entered. Then he looked at me sternly. "Vampire hearing, remember?"

I laughed at his hyper-offensiveness and we sat down to have dinner. It wasn't actually as bad as I expected it to be, so I gave all my praise to him. Bonnie seemed to be extremely happy that day. I found out that Christmas was her favorite day of the year and she was grateful she got to spend it at home. I couldn't blame her. I was happy that I had someone to spend Christmas with and that I wasn't going to be stuck in an empty world with no one to share good company with.

After dinner we had settled back into the living room around the fire and decided to watch the best Christmas film of all time according to Damon, Home Alone. I cast my vote up for Grinch at first, but we had all agreed eventually that Home Alone was the right option for tonight. Bonnie sat on the living chair in her reindeer patterned onesie, cuddled up in a big white fluffy blanket with a red Christmas hat on her head. She looked like the absolute epiphany of Christmas Spirit. Damon and I sat on the couch and shared the leftovers of our filling dinner.

Once the movie finished, we'd decided it was time for us to open the presents we'd gotten for each other. Damon went first. He grabbed the small package from underneath the tree and sat down on the coffee table as he began to unwrap it.

"It's something from the both of us," Bonnie said. Damon quirked an eyebrow as he unravelled the paper until he revealed a small wooden box. He opened it and took out the ascendant that Bonnie and I had managed to perfect just in time. Damon looked up at her, and then at me. He was shocked.

"Does it work?" he asked. Bonnie and I nodded.

"I thought you guys said you couldn't get anywhere with the research."

"That wasn't completely true..." I said. "We didn't want to get your hopes up, but we wanted to surprise you in case we could make it work."

"And we did," Bonnie added.

"So this is what you've been doing the past few months?" he asked. "I thought you were banging."

Bonnie laughed and I joined her awkwardly. I suppose it made sense. He knew we were meeting up all the time but Bonnie couldn't tell him why. It's only a reasonable conclusion. We weren't but... We certainly could have been.

"We can go as soon as you're ready," Bonnie smiled.

"Thank you..." Damon trailed off. He looked genuinely surprised and almost scared. I suppose he had let go of hope to see his mother again, so getting the chance back so easily must have thrown him off.

"Mine next!" Bonnie shouted and got up to grab her two gifts. She sat back into her chair and began to unwrap my present first. She managed to wiggle the small box out of the paper wrapping and when she opened it, her mouth dropped open.

"Oh my God... This is beautiful, Kai. Where'd you get this?" she took out the necklace I had gotten her and showed it to Damon. It was a small silver chain with a shiny purple crystal pendant.

"It's a family heirloom. I got it from aunt Mary when I was visiting Portland a few weeks ago, it's passed down to the coven leaders. It's enchanted too," I said.

"Really?" Bonnie asked.

"Yeah, the crystal has a protection spell on it. It's to warn you of any danger," I explained.

"Thank you so much," she smiled at me. I took a moment to look at her before nodding back towards her. She put the necklace back in the box and reached for the other present. Damon watched her intently and when she unwrapped it, she pulled out a small bronze key.

"What is this?" she asked.

"That.. is your own new home. Whenever you decide to move out."

"Are you kicking me out?!" she shouted out with a shocked smile on her face.

"I would never kick you out, Bon Bon, but I know you will get bored of me soon enough."

Bonnie laughed finally and she jumped out of her chair to give him a big hug. A few months ago I would have probably oozed out jealousy, but I couldn't feel a trace of it anymore. We were all good friends at this point and the two of them were likely the people I trusted most in this and any other world.

"Where is it?!" she questioned him excitedly.

"It's a few hours drive. Thought you'd want a place with some peace and quiet and I, of course, wanted to get your smelly ass far away from my own home."

"You are _insane_ , Damon. How did you even get this?" she asked.

"An old vacation lodge," he grinned, cocking his eyebrows.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" she shouted out and I laughed at her excitement. She truly was a little kid at Christmas. It was refreshing to see her that way. I prayed it would never change.

Finally, it was my turn. Bonnie tossed me the small ball shaped packet and I caught it with both hands. I unwrapped it with ease to see a small green tennis ball. Huh. Not what I was expecting. I looked up at the two of them and they both grinned towards me.

"I will be right back," Bonnie said as she hopped out of the room with an excited smile on her face.

"What?" I looked up at Damon, searching for some kind of explanation as to why I was given a tennis ball. I never even played tennis.

"You'll see," he said.

"See what?"

"She's getting the other part of our gift," he replied.

"What is it? A racket?"

"Patience, boy." He placed his hand on my shoulder and made me stand up. I heard Bonnie's footsteps approaching the living room once again and I turned around in time to see her walking back in. It wasn't only her anymore though. She was holding a German shepherd pup. It was probably about 3 months old, and she barely held onto it as she walked into the room.

"Say hiiiii," she said in a high pitched singing voice as she cheerfully spun around with the dog in her arms. I was confused at first but it didn't take long to hit me. They'd gotten me a dog. An actual dog. That must have been why we couldn't leave for the trip early. I turned back towards Damon and he was looking at me with a big smirk across his face.

"You're joking," I said. He shook his head and pulled me in for a hug.

"All yours, man," he said and I looked over his shoulder towards Bonnie. She was holding the pup and smiling right at me. In that moment, I felt my eyes beginning to water. I couldn't believe this. I was beyond happy. Not because of the dog, or because of Christmas or presents or anything like that. But because of the fact that I'd had two people in my life who cared enough to do this for me.

I finally pulled away from Damon's hug and he ruffled up my hair as I began to walk towards Bonnie. She had crouched down on the carpet and set the pup down next to her, petting it. I approached them and got down on my knees then reached out and pet the dog myself. Its fur was soft and warm to the touch. Bonnie kept her eyes on me and when I met them, I instantly pulled her into a half hug, almost squishing the dog in between us. She laughed and hugged me back.

"Are you okay?" she smiled and reached up to my cheek where she wiped away a tear that I must have let slip.

"Yeah," I breathed out, still in mild shock. "Thank you." I looked back up at her as I spoke. She smiled and lifted up the pup, placing it on my lap. I held it and let my hands run through its coat as it relaxed it my arms.

We spent the rest of the evening playing with the dog and Bonnie said I would have to come up with a name for her. The only suggestion I'd had was "Bonnie" but she said that even though she was honoured I should probably pick something else, for convenience sake. Eventually the mood died down a little and Damon fell asleep on the couch, with the dog in his arms.

When she began to clean up the kitchen, I told Bonnie I needed some air and went outside to sit on the stone fence of the Salvatore's front porch. I leaned my back against the stone pillar and let my legs rest on each side of the half-wall as I looked out towards the night sky. It wasn't snowing in Mystic Falls yet, but it was quite cold. I took a moment to reflect on the evening and how grateful I was to be there, with these people that I cared so much about. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Like I had a family.

A few minutes later, Bonnie came out onto the porch, with her big fluffy blanket draped around her shoulders and her little Christmas hat still tucked onto her head.

"Thought you might be cold," she said as she came over. She hopped onto the stone half-wall right next to me and flipped one of her legs over, copying my sitting position. She'd turned her back towards me and then leaned against me. I smiled to myself and brought my arms up around the giant blanket that her body was still wrapped in.

"Did you have fun tonight?" I asked her.

"Absolutely. Did you?"

"Yes. I can't believe you guys got me a dog," I laughed and she joined me.

"Do you like her?"

"I love her," I replied.

"Good. I thought you could use a companion," she said.

"Thank you. Seriously."

"Of course."

"I mean, for everything," I continued.

"Hm?"

"For... giving me another chance," I said. She placed one of her palms on my forearm and traced it lightly, as if she was saying "you're welcome". I stayed quiet for a while, just looking out to the starry sky and enjoying her presence.

"Did you come up with a name for her while you were sitting and brooding out here?"

"First of all, I don't brood," I said. "And second of all, yes - I did. I'm gonna name her Chewbacca. Chewie for short."

"Of course you are. Geek," she replied and I could almost feel her eyes rolling back into her head even though I couldn't see her face.

"Didn't think you'd understand the reference, you uncultured swine."

She laughed loudly at my remark and elbowed me in my ribs and I couldn't help but to howl with laughter afterwards.

"I like Chewie," she said.

She sat with me for a few more minutes in silence and then she hopped off the fence, heading back inside. Before she closed the front door she turned back to look at me for a moment.

"I'm gonna take a shower and head to sleep. You're welcome to stay in my room tonight."

* * *

About 20 minutes later, I walked through the living room and smiled when I saw Damon and Chewie cuddled up contently on the couch, then I continued on my way up the stairs and towards Bonnie's room. The door was open and I noticed her standing inside, wrapped in nothing but a long white towel that reached just above her knees. She was standing in front of a dresser, staring at the mirror above it as she held the purple necklace up around her neck. I leaned on the doorframe and watched her for a moment, then I carefully knocked on the open door. She looked at me and grinned.

"Hi," she said.

"Need help with that?" I asked as I took a few steps into the room. She nodded and I stood right behind her, taking the two ends of the necklace from her hands. I secured it behind her neck, where I felt my palms brush against her bare skin for a split second. I slowly let my hands rest down next to my sides, still uncertain about touching her and gave out a quiet sigh.

"What's wrong?" she was quick to notice my uneasiness.

"Uhh... I just," I paused. "I guess I'm still getting used to being allowed to touch someone. Without them freaking out," I let out a brief scoff as I looked down, thinking about what I'd said. I hated that I was so awkward around her. That I never knew what to do with my hands.

Suddenly, her hand reached down to my own and she played with my fingers slowly, then she rested the back of her hand in my palm, like she was encouraging me to keep touching her. So I slowly moved my hand up to her wrist, where I squeezed it lightly. She met my eyes in the mirror, and I felt her back leaning into my chest softly. I averted my eyes towards my hand and followed it as I brought it up further along her forearm, elbow and then her bicep, until I reached her shoulder. I allowed my thumb to trace gentle patterns along her skin there, as my eyes met hers again.

"It looks beautiful on you," I said quietly, looking down at the necklace that shone on her chest.

"Thanks," she whispered. Her eyes closed for a moment while she focused on my palm that slowly felt its way around the back of her neck. I brought my other hand up to hold onto her arm. I traced it up and down, slowly, as she allowed me to feel every inch of her exposed skin. She tilted her head a bit to the side and let out a quiet sigh. Her eyes were still closed and I noticed she was biting her lip. I gulped as I felt my throat getting dry, just by watching her enjoying my touch.

My eyes dipped down to where she had exposed her neck. I hesitated for a moment, but then I leaned down and placed a soft kiss into the nook of her neck where her jaw met her ear. She let out a quiet moan in return and I took this as a sign that she liked it and that she maybe even wanted me to continue. So I did. I kissed her neck again, slowly, following her jawline. I moved my mouth a bit lower and trailed a few more kisses down her skin as I listened intently for her quiet moans. I brought my arm around her waist, feeling the fabric of the damp towel she was wearing and I pulled her body further into me. My mouth now moved along her shoulder and I felt her palms settling on top of my forearm where I held her.

My lips travelled back to the nook of her neck and when I reached her jaw again she turned around to face me and kissed me on the mouth, taking me slightly by surprise. Her hands reached up to each side of my face and I had to lean down towards her as she pulled me closer. My brain filled up with ecstasy from her lips finally meeting mine after my craving it for weeks. I brought both of my hands around her waist, gripping lightly at her sides. The thought that this thin fabric of the towel wrapped around her was the only thing keeping me from seeing her bare body made me go crazy. I felt like ripping it off of her while I tugged on it slightly, but I stopped myself. I still had enough clear thought in me not to be willing to risk any mistakes with this woman.

Bonnie's kisses slowed down and she finally pulled away. Her eyes met mine and they looked so different. Different than any way I had seen them before. A bit darker. A bit hazier. She reached her arm out to grab the door beside us and she swung it shut gently. My breathing got heavier and I knew right then that I had to have her. The way that she was acting made it clear that she wanted the same thing.

So as she stood back before me, I crashed my lips down on hers and stepped closer. I accidentally slammed her body into the dresser behind her a little bit too hard when I came at her, so I pulled away and looked down at her in worry.

"Sorry," I breathed out.

"It's okay," she chuckled briefly and pulled me back down to meet her lips once again. I took a few moments to try to calm myself down and I rested my palms on the dresser behind her, just in case I lost focus for too long. I was scared I would accidentally siphon her. She must have noticed that I wanted to slow down because her kisses became longer and gentler.

Her small hands travelled up my chest and without breaking our kiss she began to take a few steps forward, pushing me backwards as she did. I stumbled a bit when I felt her bed behind me and I sat down on it, looking up at Bonnie who was now standing in front of me. She looked so small and delicate, standing there almost completely naked. If it just wasn't for that damned towel. I caught sight of the necklace I'd given her shining on her chest and it only made me more turned on than I already was. I wanted that towel gone. I wanted to see her bare and wearing only that necklace. _My_ necklace.

Bonnie stood there for a moment, looking down at me. I realized then that I probably looked like an idiot, sitting there on her bed and staring at her, my mouth was probably gaping open and I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. I thought she might have changed her mind. I was about to ask her about it but then she brought her knee up on the bed, next to my right thigh. She propped herself up on it, supporting herself on my shoulders and pulled her other knee up to my left side, straddling me as she sat down on my lap. I watched her the whole time and tried to control my heart beating its way out of my chest.

When she sat down on me, my hands reached up for her thighs almost immediately and I traced my palm against them lightly. I waited to feel her lips against mine again and when I did I felt my palms squeezing harder into her skin. I traced one of my hands further up her thigh and she allowed it to wander underneath her towel, up to her hip. I touched her skin there and almost went crazy at the fact that she was wearing no panties. I wanted her so fucking badly. My fingers dug into the flesh on her hip and she moaned loudly into my mouth.

My mind slipped and my hearing went hazy for a split second at the sound of her, and then I felt her magic coursing into my palm. She gasped for air and I pulled my hand away as soon as I realized what I'd done.

"Shit," I mumbled out quietly as my eyes met hers. I was afraid I'd ruined everything. "I'm so sorry, Bonnie, I didn't mean to-"

She interrupted my apology by crashing her lips down on mine again. I was confused for a moment but she kept kissing me, with more passion than before. I closed my eyes and kissed her back then rested both my hands at her waist, tugging at her towel. It started to come loose around her chest and I let my hand shoot up towards her neck where I held onto her as I deepened our kiss. She pulled away and moved her lips towards my cheek.

"Do it again," she whispered into my ear.

"What?" I asked.

"Siphon me."

I opened my eyes and hesitated for a second, but the intrigue took over me and I began to drain her magic with my hand around her neck. She groaned quietly and buried her face into my shoulder. Her fists tugged hard on the sleeves of my shirt and I smirked at the feeling of her sweet magic filling me up. I knew I was rock hard underneath her by now. I probably held onto the siphon just a bit longer than I should have. When I let go, I leaned forward to kiss the skin where my hand had previously caused her pain. She breathed heavily into my ear, presumably still recovering from it.

"You okay?" I questioned her softly. She moved away from my neck and looked right at me. She didn't say anything. Instead she reached down to the hem of my shirt and pulled it upwards. I helped her take it off of me and then I gently pulled her towel down to her waist. I gulped at the sight of her bare chest and ran my palm lightly across the skin of her stomach, trailing my fingers over the scar on her rib cage that I'd given her months before. I almost felt a sick sense of satisfaction upon seeing it. Like it was a gift I'd given her and she decided to keep it on her body forever.

I placed my hands on her back and let my lips leave kisses on her skin, from her neck to her chest and down to one of her breasts. She arched her back to allow me easier access and held onto my head while my lips found her nipple. I sucked it into my mouth gently and listened to her moans. Bonnie pulled on my hair and I held her tighter.

I moved my mouth off of her, gripped on her waist and flipped her down onto the bed so that I was now on top. Her towel had fallen off and she was finally completely naked and lying underneath me. I lost what was left of my cool at the sight of her and immediately reached down to unbuckle my belt. She was a bit surprised by the sudden change in pace, but she didn't complain. I pulled her legs open to each side of me and it took every ounce of my being to stop myself in that moment and look to her for permission before doing anything else.

"Please," she breathed out shakily. Her eyes were dark and filled with what I now recognized as lust. I took this as my green light. The repeated sounds of her sweet moans filled the room quickly afterwards.

* * *

 **A/N: Phew... That was.. a hard one to write. I kept losing focus but.. I think it's my favorite chapter so far :D Please tell me what you thought in a review! Those really keep me goin'.**


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